Last-Minute Reservations, Without Reservation
By Meredith Brody
I was eavesdropping on a bunch of twenty-somethings getting beautified for Saturday night as a friend and I were getting manicures ourselves in a cute Haight Street salon. Well, not eavesdropping, exactly, because their conversations were impossible to escape, whether being conducted on cellphones or broadcast across the room without the aid of electronics.
It was 3:30 in the afternoon, and I was impressed, not to say dumbfounded, that the woman getting a mani-pedi next to me called the hip Mission spot Medjool to ask for a reservation for a party of 12 -- and I use the word “party” advisedly, because it was, apparently, in order to celebrate the 24th birthday of the girl getting pale pink applied to her nails several feet away, along with several pals in the process of being digitally coated with neon orange or dark purple -- at the prime time of 8:30. On a Saturday night. That Saturday night. “Fat chance,” I thought to myself, amusedly, and wondered how the reservationist was responding.
I didn’t have to wonder long after she hung up. “They say that ten of us have to be there before we can be seated,” she told her friends. (And the rest of us.) “But they’ll fit us in.” The likelihood of ten people showing up at the same time seemed to give her pause. A new call was instituted: now the reservation was to be for eight, and, she told the Medjool hostess, “when anybody else shows up, they can get their own table.”
Another question occurred to her: was there a minimum food purchase required? No? She breathed easier, and so did I, more used to hearing “We can take you at 6 or at 9,” when I asked for a 7:30, 8, or 8:30 reservation days ahead of time for no more than four people on a weeknight, than “Come on down.”
Maybe next time things would be different. I needed the courage of the fearless – or the clueless.
P.S.: I just checked Open Table for a party of twelve at 8:30 for next Saturday at Medjool. The response? “No tables are available within 2 hours of your 8:30 PM request.”
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