The Reservation Game

My dilemma always starts innocently: I walk into my favorite restaurant, I’m ready to chow down, but the hostess greets me with insincere apologies of a 40 minute wait to be seated.

40 minutes?

Preposterous!

I have things to do (I don’t), places to be (like what, my bed?), and my time is precious (it really isn’t). This is the first, and crucial mistake. It’s a Friday night and this is a half-decent restaurant downtown – I’d be kidding myself if I wasn’t expecting to wait. But it’s already too late for such logical reason.

“There’s always that place round the corner,” I hear myself say to my friends, and with that one phrase the evening’s bar has been set: we will refuse to eat at any food establishment with a wait longer than 40 minutes. To do so would be to act against principle, to hate on an ideal and then brand myself with it.

Of course, we get to “that place round the corner” and the wait is an hour and a half. We act outraged — What is it with wait times tonight? – deluding ourselves from the truth that we’re in the wrong, not the hospitality industry.

From here it’s a test of group stubbornness. The ensuing search may last 30 minutes to an hour, but it invariably ends up in white-flag defeat with everyone so tired and hungry after trawling the city that standards reach rock bottom.

We’ll end up at some Italian chain with soggy pasta and try to convince ourselves that this is a happy outcome. I’ll laugh when someone mentions that we could have been seated and served at the first restaurant by this point, but the $8 carbonara will sour in my mouth as I wistfully dream of roasted brussel sprouts and artisan bread.

So to future me, I impart this wisdom: stop being so damn greedy. The grass is not greener on the other side. Hope is not your friend. This wont be that one time that all the popular eateries are randomly empty, so either resign yourself to a drink at the bar while you stare down slow-eating patrons, or order in. Otherwise you’ll just face disappointment.

Ha – who am I kidding. Catch you at Nandos next Friday ’round 10.

For past entries from the Man Repeller Writers club, click here.