What's the point in making a reservation?
Sunday, January 07, 2007
We made reservations for dinner at the Tribeca Grill on Saturday night, and we arrived exactly on time, which apparently isn't the way to go. The hostess told us we were "a tad early" No, we weren't early, we were exactly on time. Then she writes our name and the number of people in our party on a piece of paper and tells us to stand near the bar and hand the bartender the paper. I wasn't sure why but after a few minutes I see that the people behind the bar are actually the people that seat you. Have you ever heard of such a thing? So instead of the hostess actually seating you she calls the bartender on the phone and he's the one that seats you. We watched as she attempted to call him many times but often didn't succeed because the restaurant is crowded and why should he have to stand around waiting for the phone to ring? Plus, why is it so hard for her to just walk the 5 feet to the bar to get the group of people and bring them to their table? After we waited for 45 minutes we finally went up to the hostess to see if there was any progress in getting a table, since we had reservations. She looked at us and in a stern voice said "There are no tables at this time" At this point we were ready to go down the street to another place because no food is worth this wait and that kind of rudeness. Of course, coincidentally, a table opened up just then. Our waitress was as sweet as can be and the food was fine, but honestly, there are thousands of other restaurants in Manhattan that you can dine in and not be treated this way.
Cons: You can make reservations, but it's not guaranteed that that's when you will get seated