Skift Take
Restaurants: I promise I will order lots of food and drinks if you just let me sit down at my table even if the rest of my party isn't here. Also, I will come back and eat again.
It was 7 p.m. and below freezing outside when we walked into Little Tong, the super popular noodle shop in Manhattan’s East Village. I arrived with three other friends; a fourth was stuck on the subway, something that happens with increasing regularity in New York City. The restaurant was snug and warm, a relief from the cold night. And, even better, it was relatively empty. We asked for a table for five. The hostess told us we could not be seated until the fifth arrived. “We’re hungry and we’re all moms of little kids, paying babysitters by the hour. We will start to eat and drink right away,” I said, hoping she might let us sit down. The hostess was not swayed.
I pointed out that there was no bar at which to wait, just a small entryway, which was hovering somewhere around the temperature of a walk-in freezer, and which we had already filled to capacity. "Sorry, we can’t seat you." We texted our friend. "Almost there!" she wrote back. "Our friend is really close, are you sure we can’t sit down?" "I’m sure," she said. And I was sure we would be eating somewhere else that night.
Quite frankly, I’m tired of being told I can’t sit down because someone in my group is delayed. People get waylaid in traffic, delayed on the subway, or held up by an emergency at home or a crisis at work. And I’m not the only one incensed by this policy; Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Larry David feels the same way. In his most recent “Fatwa” season, he is refused a table because his party is incomplete. "We don’t seat incomplete parties," said the hostess, indignantly. "The chef really likes everyone to sit down at the same time and order together. It’s the optimal dining experience." David is baffled. "You know what the optimal dining experience is? To eat when you’re hungry." Rather than wait, he recruits a stranger having a drink at the bar to join them as a stand-in until his friend shows up. They get seated.
While I wish I’d have thought of that at Little Tong, I didn’t. I’m not as clever as L
