The New Yorker:

How bots, mercenaries, and table scalpers have turned the restaurant reservation system inside out.

By Adam Iscoe

Everyone needs to eat somewhere, and in New York City that place is often a restaurant. New York is a city of long hours, tiny kitchens, cramped apartments—and dining out, a lot. There is, improbably, always an occasion: date night, working late, friends in town, New Year’s Eve, too tired to cook, in-laws, layoff, anniversary, breakup. But getting a decent dinner reservation here is a challenge. Any well-reviewed Italian joint? You’d better have one. Gourmet burger place? Good luck. The new French-Korean fried-chicken spot? Booked solid for months.

In New York, the neighborhood restaurant doesn’t have much room for neighbors anymore. At Sailor, April Bloomfield and Gabriel Stulman’s new spot in Fort Greene, reservations are scooped up fourteen days in advance by residents of SoHo, Aspen, and East Hampton, who likely saw the place on some list, or while doomscrolling TikTok or Eater. The majority of diners log on to a restaurant’s Web site at 10:59 a.m., two weeks before they want to eat out, then wait, click, and pray. Pete Wells, who gave Sailor a three-star review in the Times, wrote that although the bar and two booths in front are set aside for walk-ins, reservations “disappear within minutes of being offered.” Locals are politely quoted a three-hour wait. Of Roscioli, a downtown outpost of the famous Roman restaurant, the Post wrote, “New Yorkers are risking their lives, begging, bribing and pleading to get a table at the Italian eatery.”

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