How long does it take you to eat your dinner? By which I mean a proper dinner: three courses; elbows on the table; yes, I’d love a coffee; now finish your anecdote? I only ask because increasingly, certain restaurants think there’s a strong chance that instead of coming to eat some lovely food and have a jolly time, you might be intent on table blocking. They are instituting time limits. At places like Novikov and Sushisamba, Aqua Shard and so many more, restaurants where the prices will make your credit card smell of burning plastic, you are told the table is yours for two hours and no more. Clear off. Charmed, I’m sure.
This peaked with a recent opening – they’ll remain nameless to protect the guilty – which said you might have to give your table back after 90 minutes. This is a restaurant where three courses, with a cheaper bottle of wine, will cost £60 a head or 66p a minute. I suggested via Twitter that this was a bit much. They were indignant. They told me they were a lovely, relaxed restaurant but that some people might want to have a quicker meal before the theatre.
In which case, the diner will surely be the one to tell you they need to be out quickly. Here’s what I don’t understand. Restaurants are in charge of their own service. Either they know how long it takes them to serve a full meal or they don’t. If they can get it done within 90 minutes or two hours they don’t need to institute a time limit. And if they can’t, then the time limit is useless. Is lingering over the petits fours now a crime?
Let’s not pretend. My ludicrous job as a restaurant critic, with its greasy patina of assumed entitlement, means I’m unlikely ever to be told to get off my table. But I do remember the acute anxiety I felt the first time I came across a two-hour time limit at Yauatcha a few years back. I sat there worrying whether their failure to take my order for 20 minutes was part of the tick, tick, tick. After that, was I eating fast enough? I assumed it was a bizarre one-off. How wrong I was.
Why has this happened? Partly it’s the increasingly brutal economics of the restaurant business. To make a profit, they have to turn tables and they want to make doing so easier. But I think a major part has been played by technology – which is to say, online booking systems. Obviously yay technology! We all love being able to plan our evening via a few clicks. But it does make it easier to add small print online making outrageous demands that few reasonable people could ever bring themselves to mention if they were talking to them over the phone. (The most outrageous example: the £5 charge for a window seat at the Marco Pierre White Steakhouse in Birmingham. I adore Birmingham, but I’m not paying a fiver to look at it.)
It’s just not very hospitable, which is a crying shame for the hospitality business. Plus, it can work both ways. I also suspect one reason there’s been a rise in no-shows is people feeling less beholden to a booking because they did it online rather than by talking to a human being.
That’s not to excuse the behaviour; it’s just an unintended consequence. It’s something I fully intend to discuss with my friends in detail the next time I go out for dinner. If they allow me enough time.
