A return to spontaneity

+ Reservations services should hire a philosopher, says Robert Sietsema, Eater New York's senior restaurant critic

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Are we ready to be spontaneous again?

According to data from reservations and customer relationship management service SevenRooms, two-thirds of the reservations on its platform are made day-of. Two thirds! In an era of ‘that-reservation-is-impossible-to-get,’ this is a notable showing for same-day bookings.  

That’s if guests are booking at all. OpenTable says that walk-ins — guests who show up and dine without booking ahead — are up 4 percent in the first seven months of this year as compared to the same period in 2023. 

This sort of behavior is good news for Robert Sietsema, Eater New York’s top critic. During a recording of my podcast The Simmer this week, Sietsema lamented that restaurant reservations have become undemocratic. Instead, he says, restaurants use platforms like Resy to tweak who gets in the door and when, optimizing timing and table turns and customer spend and all the other unsexy, seemingly inhospitable elements of running a successful restaurant in 2024.

Whether reservations were ever were democratic is up for debate, but is it possible that, in an era of connected and convenient technology, they’ve become even less accessible? 

It probably depends who’s asking, but Eater’s critic, who’s been in the business of reviewing restaurants since the early ‘90s, says that the apps can make a the start of a restaurant meal feel too transactional — even if you’re walking in without booking ahead.

Take, for example, getting asked for your phone number in order to walk in and sit at the bar, a practice Sietsema dislikes.

“It's no secret that I try to walk into restaurants all the time and avoid these reservation systems,” he says. “But the fact of the matter is, they demand to know your cell phone number the minute you arrive.”

He continues, “Presumably they're plugging it into Resy, or whatever it is, and drawing up the information on you — that's so disingenuous. You're walking in and saying, ‘Let's be friends.’ And they're like, ‘Not until I find out what your income is.’”

That’s where the newly created role of ‘reservations philosopher’ comes into play. 

As far as I can tell, this is not a serious proposal. But reservations companies need to broaden their definition of what makes a restaurant successful, Sietsema says, and it might take a little soul-searching for these commercial businesses to see the light.

“Sometimes success is a much broader horizon than they imagine,” he adds. “Success for a restaurant, to me, is if you're there in 20 years. How many restaurants today can count on that?” 

This sounds a lot like longing for the past, which we’ve heard recently from a different professional critic. In his outgoing New York Times column that I reference at least once per week, Pete Wells lamented tech culture and how it’s made restaurants worse for diners. 

Covid clearly changed the calculus for plenty of restaurants; reservations became a way to make a potentially unpredictable evening out more predictable. Restaurants used platforms to fill limited, socially distanced tables while (hopefully) keeping everyone healthy. And just when those conditions started to improve, inflation took off and restaurants once again had to focus squarely on their bottom lines — hence tracking who’s coming through the door, what they like, and what they’re spending, no matter how they get there.

This was my chief complaint about that infamous Wells column: Nothing, including the restaurant diner experience, happens in a vacuum. To ignore the operational realities of running a modern restaurant is to paint an incomplete picture of the experience.

In my opinion, there’s a fine line between criticizing and complaining. I asked Sietsema about this. How does a professional reviewer do more of the former, less of the latter?

“I try to give the reader hints — I do occasionally mention things like asking for your phone number,” he says. “I just feel like [restaurants’] data collection often supersedes your pleasure.” 

For the full story, listen to the latest episode of The Simmer. 

What else? 

• The US Department of Justice accused Visa of illegally monopolizing the debit card market. A new lawsuit says that Visa abused its dominant position to force businesses to use its network, which, according to the suit, controls over 60 percent of debit transactions. — CNN

• How to buy wine that might make you rich. I’m inexplicably back on that wine investment beat, a topic I knew little about (until recently!) but one that utterly fascinates me. — Food & Wine

• The customized drink is out of control. “Some chains said they look more to social media than to marketing executives for menu inspiration.”  — New York Times

• Olive Garden relents to delivery pressure. The chain will start delivering direct orders using Uber Eats couriers at select locations this year, with a potential nationwide rollout early next. — Restaurant Dive