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Breaking: New Yorkers Wait Hours To Get Into Hot, Reservation-Less Restaurants
By
Jen Chung
Published Jun 23, 2013
Modified Jun 23, 2013
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Sam Horine/Gothamist
By
Jen Chung
Published Jun 23, 2013
Modified Jun 23, 2013
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Waiting on line is part of being a New Yorker—and waiting for a table at a restaurant (have you seen the lines outside of some brunch places on Sundays?) is a rite of passage. But now the Daily News examines the phenomenon of diners getting antsy over being made to wait at Brooklyn restaurants.
Noting, "At Roberta’s, an of-the-moment Bushwick pizza joint off the Morgan Ave. stop of the L train, the dinnertime wait on the weekends averages two hours," the Daily News finds the Murray Hill resident who succumbed to "peer pressure" and was waiting outside the pizza place famed for hosting Hillary Clinton's birthday and the occasional naked waitress. Matt Devereaux said, "This meal had better change my life. If this doesn’t change my life, if this isn’t something I can’t get in the borough of Manhattan, this is wholly irrelevant." But the insanity is not just at Roberta's:
Over in Park Slope, Alyssa Venere and her boyfriend were in the middle of a two-hour wait for Asian-fusion restaurant Talde. “It drives me freaking nuts!” she said of the no-rezzie policy. The couple had gone to the Columbia Street Thai spot Pok Pok NY the weekend before and found the long line equally frustrating: “It’s good, but not good enough to wait two hours,” she said.
Other couples stuck in line for Talde took the drastic steps of finding activities to kill time elsewhere — or even pre-eating offsite while waiting for their table. “We left our name, we think we’re going to try and wait it out, drink somewhere else, maybe get an appetizer,” said Cari Frisch of Brooklyn Heights.
Why don't these restaurants have reservations? Dale Talde claims, "We decided not to take reservations because it was really important to us to make the restaurant a true neighborhood spot, a place where the locals could always pop in and grab a bite to eat. It’s been successful so far," and other restaurateurs agree, saying they want to encourage walk-ins and not "freeze up" their rooms. Keep that in mind while you're drinking the fake beer slushie during your wait!
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pok pok
restaurants
roberta's
talde
waiting
waiting on line
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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