Le Coucou

[Melonius Thunk]

Deleted

[Lippy]

I'm hoping I can get a reservation for my birthday dinner.

[Melonius Thunk]

When is it?

[Lippy]

December 23

[Melonius Thunk]

Send an email to corry.arnold@starr-restaurant.com and ask him to reserve a table for yoour birthday.

[Lippy]

Send an email to corry.arnold@starr-restaurant.com and ask him to reserve a table for yoour birthday.

OKAY! (Should I mention your name?)

[mitchells]

Sheesh. Called the day reservations opened up for a Sunday in late October and all I could get was a too early 6pm.

[Neocon maudit]

[sigh] I'm -still- trying to book a table here.

[Steve R.]

I gave up. They are clearly the kind of place that has decided to hold back most of the prime time reservations & likes to cultivate repeat business & insider info. That's their choice, so mine has been to go elsewhere. Too bad... I liked the place.

[Sneakeater]

FWIW, they tell me they're genuinely that booked. When I get special treatment, it's usually via cancellations. I may not be that VI a VIP, though.

[Sneakeater]

Although OTOH, I've never seen an 8-9:30 PM reservation there on OT, either.

[Steve R.]

Uhhh, Sneak... if Mitchells called when he did & got the response he did, then there must have been a lot of other calls just before him to book out all but the 6'ish slots for the evening he wanted. Similarly, we've been offered 6 or 6:30 well in advance & opentable only has 6 or 6:30 regularly. Either folks who call for 7-9pm unanimously don't want 6:30 or they're holding back later tables. My experience tells me that a popular place doesn't sell out 7pm every night, yet almost always have 6:30 tables available. My guess is that they fill all those seats for 7-11pm, but just not in the order that requests are received. Nice to have that many known folks wanting to return & able to get in without struggling thru the advertised system.

 

eta: just want to be clear that my comments aren't a criticism of the place or sarcastic. I like them, I like the food & I'd want to go again. I fully understand that they can choose how to fill their seats & I don't begrudge them for it.

 

eta, part deux: so, Chef Rose (or your lovely staff), if you read this & wish to curry favor with some lowly food board writers (& virtual friends of voyager et al), just let me know when you'd like to give us an 8pm table &, if we can make it that evening, we'll be happy to return. If we can't, maybe we can pass the offer to mitchells or Mr. Maudit. Merci beaucoup.

[sweatshorts]

Yogi Berra would love this exchange.

[Sneakeater]

That's pretty persuasive.

[tyrone slothrop]

This very same thing happened when we called in August for a reservation in September. At 9am, all reservation except for a very early one, were taken. When I expressed incredulity, I was informed that they open their reservations book at 12am on Open Table. Haven't tested this by logging on to OT at midnight though.

 

We decided to take the reservation in the hope we could move it to a later time if there was a cancellation. No such luck, but we did have an excellent (if far too early) dinner. We'd love to return, and plan on doing so, but not in that time slot again.