Your table is not ready yet
Restaurants requiring you to line up a bit to get a table are automatically deemed worth waiting for. ( Sir, you’re number twenty in the list, please take a seat.) Sometimes, they don’t accept credit cards or advanced reservations. They have a big sign by the entrance that admonishes the customer: please wait to be seated. Don’t go wandering inside looking for a seat. Eliminating the inconvenient queue by expanding the space or opening another branch to accommodate the high demand can only reduce the restaurant’s allure. The moment the line outside disappears and anyone can just walk in to an empty table without a reservation, the crowd just moves away, but not before posting a photo of the empty seats outside — Dude, the place is a ghost town.
Waiting for a table at a restaurant featured in a guidebook or the food channel as a musttry place (it will take around 45 minutes to be seated) elevates delayed gratification to a photo-op conclusion equivalent to being announced winner of a contest, “Sir, your table is ready. This way please.” Here, you glance back at the line behind you — just be patient folks.
The receptionist walks briskly into the interior expecting to be followed without demur. Is she training for the brisk-walk competition in the Olympics and trying to lose you? Any group who has not given up its place in the queue for forty-five minutes is puffing to keep up. (Okay, here’s your nice corner near the toilet. Enjoy.)
It seems an unchallenged belief in some quarters that lack of a waiting line for a restaurant is a sign of undesirability. It’s like a woman without a horde of admirers. It doesn’t matter that she looks stunning and can discuss particle physics and conjugate Latin verbs. It is simply presumed the lack of a waiting line indicates that there is something wrong here.
The explanation for inflicting on oneself the unnecessary stress of deferred gratification (I want my marshmallow now) is herd mentality. The need for conformity is most acute in a foreign trip involving a group where majority rules and individual intransigence is considered dysfunctional. The guidebook guru in the group couches her suggestion in a tone that reserved for bratty children who bawl their heads off when they’re made to wash their hands. Very slowly, as if parsing each word so that an idiot like you can comprehend, the guru’s arguments on the need to wait in line for food: a) this restaurant only has two branches, this one and the original in New York; and b) we’re already here and our status-conscious friends will wonder why we missed out on this restaurant.
Such an argument does not hold water with someone who has been to Siem Reap for three days and resisted the temptation to check out Angkor Vat. So passing up a restaurant in Las Vegas is no big deal. The self-appointed tour guide then dismisses the need for this particular vote: c) If you can’t wait, why not just go to the deli across to get a hot dog, and we can meet you back at the hotel. This three-point declaration is delivered in a crescendo as the majority becomes a herd.
The argument for waiting in line actually takes all of 90 seconds as the restaurant receptionist taps her ball pen on the lectern and inquires in a slightly castigating tone: so, ma’am do you want to be listed down and wait 45 minutes. She is already impatiently looking at the party crowding behind the hesitant group.
You cave in and agree to wait 45 minutes. Having finally succumbed, it is bad manners to keep looking at your watch and repeating your arguments against needing to wait just to eat especially when you are already so hungry.
It is also the epitome’ of élan once the meal is in progress to thank the guidebook guru for her willpower to compel the whole group to dine in this place — this restaurant deserves its fame and the long lines to get in. The food is simply divine. It is not advisable to overdo the compliments. To call it a milestone in your culinary history as homo sapiens may be perceived as a bit sarcastic.
Now, can we have a selfie with the food so we can post it right away?
Now, can we have a selfie with the food so we can post it right away?