To be a restaurant critic is to be a bruised veteran of the modern reservations system and the tangled politics of booking cancellations. It’s just one of hidden realities of the gig; the stressed, keyboard-tapping little figure hunched behind the curtain of the profession’s glamorously puffed-up public presentation. I have lost innumerable hours engaged in the weeks-long hokey-cokey of booking, cancelling and then rebooking the same restaurant; I have jabbed hopelessly at some shiny new hype-magnet’s recalcitrant reservations platform, in the faint hope it’ll spit out an option that isn’t ‘lunch’ at 3.10pm; I have spent hundreds on non-refundable deposits, reserved pizza dough rather than a seat, and repeatedly forgotten my chosen pseudonym when a restaurant booking manager has called to confirm my attendance (‘Is this Mark?’ ‘No… wait! I mean, yes.’)
True, it’s a job that looks like it is all scurrying waiters, caviar supplements and the pop of champagne corks ringing out in grand, filigreed rooms. But I am here to tell you restaurant columnists devote inordinate amounts of time toggling between burner email accounts, typing fake names into little boxes, and acting out what feels like a cross between administrative plate-spinning and a low-stakes espionage drama.
Why do I mention all this? Well, as the year hurtles on and the dispiriting closures pile up (I am personally raising a Custardo to the memory of Forza Win in Camberwell) the question of no-shows, booking etiquette and stingy, dish-sharing diners is firmly back on the menu. And, this time, it feels indicative of a wider, philosophical disagreement in how restaurants should operate.
I should recap. A recent report in the Financial Times highlighted the fact that more and more London restaurants, including Gymkhana, Dorian and Chutney Mary, have recently introduced either minimum spends or significant, non-refundable booking deposits. Of course, some form of hefty security deposit or pre-pay mechanism has long been the norm at certain, pilgrimage-worthy, temples to high gastronomy (it’s a decade since The Clove Club caused a collective clutching of pearls when it started asking customers to stump up £95 for a meal they hadn’t yet eaten). But this new wave of pay-in-advance restaurants are specifically trying to combat modern issues: table-snagging bots, opportunist resale sites, influencers ordering the bare minimum and ‘reservation-squatting’ — a new social phenomena whereby indecisive groups make multiple bookings for one night, bin off all but one with little or no notice, and rob already imperilled food businesses of vital trade and atmosphere.
I don’t think you’ll find many restaurant enthusiasts who disagree with the principle of these deterrents. But these charges feel like a necessary, justified evil in a world where phone-tapping efficiencies have inadvertently caused many of us to forget basic human qualities like politeness and actually committing to a particular choice.
And yet, I find myself edging towards a kind of moral revulsion at the idea of any kind of minimum spend policy or pre-pay creep at restaurants. It isn’t just that a wider roll-out of these directives could hamper spontaneity and inadvertently punish solo diners. (Though, I think of a recent, invigorating stumble into Tamila in King’s Cross – an impromptu, lone hour or so perched on a stool, messily communing with a buttery roti canai, a brow-beading lamb curry and a terrific, frothed flagon of their house lager – that would well have been scuppered by a punitive ordering threshold or an inflexible set menu.) It is more a question of vibe, messaging and mood music; a sense of the central contract, egalitarianism and deft, nudging hospitality that is at heart of the best restaurants, having been somewhat compromised. Handling fees for using QR code apps. The £2 per diner ‘cover charge’ payments that are routinely snuck onto the bills at Mayfair’s bougiest wallet-emptiers. These off-putting bits of avaricious overreach show that it’s possible to be both economically justified and spiritually iffy.
Practically all hospitality businesses are in a fight for their lives and are also faced by a dining public that is prone to taking liberties (I am reminded here of Joké Bakare telling me one of the issues with Chishuru’s original Brixton site was locals who would commandeer outdoor tables to eat takeaway they’d bought elsewhere). In essence, the likes of Dorian, Gymkhana and co are trying to wrestle back control from the reservation-squatting PAs, influencers and other intermediaries who are taking tables away from passionate, engaged guests who want to actually go for the food rather than the social media clout.
However, I hope this is a brief, unavoidable shock to the market, as opposed to a herald of a fine dining sector that is getting even more inaccessible. I hope the narrative shifts to the exciting rash of new lunchtime deals – £30 on Wednesdays and Thursdays at Nick Beardshaw’s highly-rated Esher restaurant Starling; an absurd £15 for a rotating main and a drink at forthcoming Camberwell gastropub The Kerfield Arms – that feel like a different solution to the same central issue of getting bodies through the door and backsides on seats.
Because that is the other thing you learn from years in the labyrinthine, mysterious world of modern restaurant reservations: barely anywhere is ever as consistently full as you think it’s going to be. Drop in on most of these supposedly oversubscribed restaurants and you’ll often find that there is a walk-in table to be had, and an unpeopled room that doesn’t correspond to the enervating scarcity on a reservations platform. From pre-pay and minimum spend to loss-leading set menus, restaurateurs are just trying to fill dining rooms with as many enthusiastic, free-spending customers as possible in any way they can. To my mind, they’ll get a lot further with honey instead of vinegar.
