In a recent ranking by Dojo, a business-support platform, of “The Hardest Restaurant Reservations to Get in the World,” the notoriously exclusionary Rao’s was the only Big Apple eatery to make the top ten at No. 2.
But most every new restaurant in town might as well be Rao’s. In my twenty-five years on the dining beat for The Post, I have never seen such a glut of all-but-inaccessible eating venues as we have now. Most are new, a few are old; some are good, some not — but all are exasperating.
You want in at Adda, Bangkok Supper Club, Polo Bar? Get real.
No wonder private clubs like Casa Cipriani and Maxim are mushrooming around town. People — myself included — are fed up with the nuisance of getting reservations at restaurants propelled by outdated reputations, by social media and legions of influencers who claim (usually fake) millions of followers, or by a supposed celebrity clientele.
Then, once they’re lucky enough to score a booking, they find the restaurant of their dreams to be noisy, cramped, overpriced and all-around obnoxious. Also, the food often isn’t that good. It’s all great for the restaurant business — which took a beating from the pandemic that still haunts some places — but it’s beyond annoying for diners.
From Chez Fifi on the Upper East Side to I Cavallini in Williamsburg, you’re out of luck unless you have the patience to wait weeks or longer, and pray they’ll contact you if anything opens up. The Resy “Notify” status is scarier news from a restaurant than a Health Department “C” rating.
Many spots “block out” the hours between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., when most people want to have dinner, holding them for boldfaces and house pets with access to secret phone lines.
Some seem to make it easy to book online — until OpenTable or Resy drags you through a maze to nowhere, or demands credit card data with warnings about pricey penalties for changes.
The frenzy to get into just about every new restaurant before it’s had time to work out the kinks defies reason and common sense.
Some dishes I had at Bartolo, a cozy, new Spanish place on West Fourth Street, were as good as I expected from chef Ryan Bartlow, of East Broadway Ernesto’s fame. But my $300 meal for two also featured poorly fried ham croquettes, a horrific noise level, and an inscrutable wine list in tiny type that couldn’t be read without a microscope.
Yet, no tables are available at Bartolo for parties of two or four earlier than 10 p.m. for the next two weeks — which are normally slow around Labor Day.
Corner Store remains impenetrable to most mortals, despite reviewers’ and my friends’ finding the food hit-or-miss. Sure, it’s a good-looking, dimly-lit room — but the city’s full of dark speakeasy wannabes.
The place took flight after Taylor Swift popped in last fall with Travis Kelce. It’s been packed ever since, despite a New York magazine review calling it “adult cuisine as imagined by children.”
Savvy diners should book a table elsewhere. Life’s too short to struggle for fancy “five cheese pizza rolls” or yet another plate of grilled branzino.
Chez Fifi on East 74th Street is one of the sexiest rooms in Manhattan, but the $82 chicken for two was one of the driest birds I’ve ever had. No matter. There are no table “within 2.5 hours of 7 p.m.” in the foreseeable future?
Then take Casa Tua — please.
Although the East 70s are full of better Italian restaurants, none is as hard to reserve as Casa Tua, which is attached to a private club of the same name. Even my friends who are club members struggle to book tables in the public restaurant.
Casa Tua is a satellite of the Miami Beach original that’s popular with boldfacers, but who are scarce on East 76th Street. The lack of star wattage at the UES outpost doesn’t deter its fans who don’t seem to care that the food’s better at Sant Ambroeus, Lusardi’s or La Sistina.
I’ll enjoy them instead — and leave Casa Tua to scenemakers in search of a scene.
Read the full article here
