Earlier this summer, I met up with friends at the latest restaurant-that’s-more-like-a-bar on the Lower East Side. As they handed out our menus, our server reminded us with a tone of gentle but unwavering conviction: We needed to be out in 90 minutes. We raced through dinner — cocktails, a dozen plates to share — and in the end had time left over. (We ordered a bottle of wine to max out our minutes.)
I’d seen what happens to diners who blow their deadlines. Tables had been getting the pink slip in Brooklyn a few weeks before at an otherwise-cozy spot in Fort Greene. I was seated next to a couple still picking at the bones of their whole fish when a manager asked whether they planned on staying for dessert. “We’re going to need this table back shortly,” she said. Off in a corner, a three-top got the boot during their last round of drinks.
For as long as anyone can remember, servers have nudged New Yorkers along, faux-casually asking “Can I get you anything else?” and dropping checks as soon as customers set down their spoons. Now they’re being more blunt about it: Firm time limits are presented on reservation apps (Bar Contra, which opened this month, states on its OpenTable page, “Your reservation will grant you 90 minutes in one of our tables”), they’re mentioned at host stands, and they’re openly reiterated whenever diners get a little too comfortable after the crème brûlée is cleared.
Everyone has had the experience of walking into a restaurant without a reservation and discovering that, yes, there’s a table available but the restaurant will need it back at a certain time for someone with a reservation. That’s easier to stomach than being told the table you’ve reserved well in advance nevertheless comes with a stopwatch.
Many in the industry, I discovered, still aren’t quite ready to talk about it on the record (one person called it “a nuanced dance,” another asked to be kept anonymous after we’d spoken). Practitioners of this movement — which include, among others, the Four Horsemen, Atoboy, Coqodaq, Eel Bar — are a particular style of restaurant that is casual in premise but run with the rigidity of a fine-dining establishment. They have an impressive choreography to their service to ensure they flip each table every hour and a half, seating the entire dining room three times per night. “If we don’t get those three turns, we don’t stay in business,” says Guy Gladstein, a managing partner at Figure Eight in the West Village. The 50-seat spot has an average guest check of around $65, Gladstein tells me. “That last turn is what’s keeping us going,” he says. (There, tables of one-to-three people are capped at 90 minutes; four or more people get two hours.)
Restaurant technology is such that streamlining and tracing the clockwork is possible via Resy and the point-of-sale system Toast, but the job of making sure groups actually leave still comes down to staff members. “A masterful server is dictating the pace without the guest feeling it,” says Amanda McMillan, general manager of the Four Horsemen. There isn’t much wiggle room: Everyone has to show up on time and order within a few minutes of sitting down. The kitchen can’t hit any snags that delay the dishes, and a warm bottle of Chablis can’t go into an ice bucket for 15 minutes to chill before it’s poured. “If there is a strict timeline that must be adhered to,” McMillan says, “it’s the restaurant’s job to manage that — if the restaurant can’t hit the mark of 90 minutes gracefully, that is on them.”
Of course, if the restaurant does its job and diners still don’t get the hint, less subtle tactics may be required. Gracefully convincing people to vacate a table requires quite a bit of skill, and with the perception that restaurants are pricier than ever, it becomes more difficult. At the Four Horsemen, if a table orders extra wine or just runs long, the servers negotiate with the host to stretch time or move the party to the bar or to Nightmoves, its sister spot next door. No matter what, the restaurant needs its two-tops back after two hours max. “That’s how long,” McMillan says, “it reasonably takes to have a nice dinner with us.”
