The Fatty Bao in Bandra.
A few months ago, I tried to book a table at a new Lower Parel restaurant. I called them for four days straight, five or six times a day. The lines would either be busy, or “currently not reachable”, or no one would pick up. So I showed up one day and requested a table for two. The hostess who had a full ledger in front of her and a fairly irate crowd around her told me it would take an hour and half. I said I was happy to sit at the bar. She waved in its general direction and said “It’s full, go see for yourself”. I gave her my phone number and we went around the corner to another eatery to wait and get a snack to take the edge off our hunger. About 45 minutes later, I called the restaurant and got yelled at. “We told you it would be an hour and a half.” A couple of minutes into the conversation, I had a call waiting. It was the same restaurant, calling me from another line to tell me my table was ready.
Another time, a group of us requested a popular al fresco table at a place we’d been to a few times. We were told it had already been booked. When we got there, the table we’d asked for was empty and stayed empty through our dinner.
A friend tried to book a table at a high-end Chinese restaurant. The lady managing the phone calls said that the earliest date available was a couple of weeks from then, and brusquely informed him that the restaurant’s dress code was smart casuals (collared T-shirt or shirt, trousers, closed shoes) and that they don’t have valet parking. When he called again in a few weeks and asked if he could walk in and get a seat a bar, they were equally curt. Their reply: “Absolutely not!”
All of us have stories of unpleasant, even bitter, experiences while trying to get a table at restaurants – entering an empty restaurant only to be told it’s full; being made to wait for an hour for a confirmed booking; receiving flat-out refusals even for a party for two. Restaurant owners and managers say that there’s a valid reason for almost every such instance.
“Reservations are our biggest pain point,” said Yash Bhanage, founder and chief operating officer at The Bombay Canteen. “There are a lot of no-shows. As soon as someone makes a reservation at TBC, they get a text message about it. A day before we call to check if they’re still coming. [On the day], we’ll hold the table for 15 minutes before we call someone to check where they are, and [often] they won’t answer the phone.”
While some guests don’t turn up, others refuse to leave and consequently prevent new diners from getting a table. Six years ago, during the early days of The Table in Colaba, owner Gauri Devidayal found herself in a uniquely difficult situation. The folks who had occupied the community table for the first seating, around 8pm, weren’t willing to leave it at 10.30pm, even though the next group of diners had arrived for the second seating. “We offered the first group another table, and they refused to move,” said Devidayal. “Some of them went to the second group and told them to take the other table.” There was plenty of pleading with the first lot, and many attempts at appealing to their common sense and logic. “Short of physically dragging them off their chairs, there was nothing else I could do,” she said. “People like to linger at the community table.” The second group left; Devidayal “was mortified”. The next day, she sent apology notes and goodie bags to their homes and The Table stopped double-booking the community table. If a seat is booked, it’s considered booked for the entire evening.
This is but one of many horror stories restaurateurs have about table bookings. We’re not great at making them, honouring them and understanding how they work, the say. Every time one of us reaches unreasonably late at a restaurant or pulls a no-show or cancels a booking, we not only make things difficult for them, we make another customer, someone just like us, pay for it. Sometimes we’re the cause of the trouble; sometimes we’re at the receiving end of it.
This is what restaurateurs I spoke with said:
• Yes, Mumbai’s traffic is unpredictable so we’re often delayed and expect our tables to be held. That’s fair enough. But if a previous seating takes 15 minutes longer than expected over dessert, many of us hate waiting for the table to clear even if we get a spot at the bar in the meantime, and we make sure everyone knows we’re pissed off.
• We book tables at multiple spots for the same meal. After we decide where we’re going, we neglect to inform the other restaurants.
• When we do call to cancel a table, we don’t do it in time. Yes, a cancellation frees a table for a walk-in, but if a restaurant has a waitlist and a table is cancelled half an hour before it was supposed to be occupied, there’s nothing a restaurant can do to help a waitlisted person. If the waitlisted person decides to show up and try his or her luck, they think the restaurant’s claim of being fully booked was a lie or marketing gimmick.
• We don’t understand that when a restaurant is empty when we’ve walked in, it doesn’t necessarily mean the place doesn’t have bookings. Most of the time, it’s empty because the seating time is in half an hour.
• If we happen to know them, we call restaurant owners and ask them to make bookings for us. Woodside Inn has a no-reservations policy yet partner Pankil Shah often has people phone to him to ask, “Can we get a reservation?”
• The manager of every restaurant is used to being humiliated by guests.
• Even at well-managed restaurants, at every seating, approximately ten to 15 per cent of the reservations will be no-shows and about 20 per cent will be cancelled. This not only affects the restaurant’s revenues but also reputation.
Chetan Rampal, a partner at Monkey Bar and The Fatty Bao, gave us an example of what can happen with a last-minute cancellation:
A lady called The Fatty Bao and asked for a table. The manager told her that they were booked out, and that he’d let her know if there was a cancellation. Later in the evening, she asked him to “do something”. He professed helplessness and apologised, in response to which she said, “I will dine there tonight to show you.” Her husband arrived at 7.30pm and got a spot at the bar. There was a last-minute cancellation for their 8.30pm seating, and he was seated at the now-free table. She joined him after a little while. When they were ordering dessert, she asked for the manager and told him that she had been proved right. The next day, she posted an angry review online, naming the manager and criticising the restaurant.
Every restaurateur I spoke with says this: If I had a table available, why would I not seat you and earn revenue? But only a handful of restaurants communicate this well enough. “Even if I don’t have a reservation at The Bombay Canteen, I sense that the motivation is to accommodate me,” said Shah. Most restaurants don’t specifically leave tables open for walk-ins. “I would not turn down a guaranteed table for the possibility of a booking,” said Devidayal.
Restaurants use different kinds of table management systems depending on their format: bar/casual/formal/quick service. This is why Shree Thaker Bhojanalay hands out counters; Swati Snacks has chairs set outside; Ladu Samrat splits up groups and has us sitting with strangers; Masala Library and Wasabi recommend calling way in advance. “The no-reservation system works really well at One Street Over,” said chef Kelvin Cheung
Mini Punjab, Lucky Restaurant, The Fatty Bao and The Bombay Canteen are among those trying out online bookings, which make communication easier but not always better. On the one hand, we find it easier to handle rejection when another person is not involved in the process. “People seem to be okay with a screen telling them no,” said Rampal. On the other hand, we feel less guilty when we don’t honour such reservations. At The Bomay Canteen, for instance, the number of no-shows and cancellations for online bookings is more than double those made on the phone.
Making the whole exercise less frustrating for both restaurants and diners requires just a few simple adjustments. Restaurants could make customers feel like they’re doing their absolute best to accommodate us even if they can’t seat us immediately. As for us, all we need to do is be there when we said we would.