You may have spotted a flurry of stories in the press recently about the arrival of a new way to secure hard-to-get restaurant bookings. It all kicked off with a piece in The New Yorker talking about the arrival of touts, scalpers and online reservation trader websites in the restaurant scene. Bots are apparently being used to secure hard-to-get bookings which are then sold on the secondary market for hundreds of pounds - and that's before you spend a penny on the food or drink.
Rather than pour more oil on the fire (or indeed give the scalpers any more publicity) we've taken a look at some of the most-referenced restaurants in London that are being affected. Here's our guide on when reservations open for those tricky to book tables, plus an idea of how you might get bookings at off-peak times.
Hard to get
Core by Clare Smyth (Notting Hill) - Reservations open 91 days in advance and can be made online. As one of London's rare three Michelin-starred restaurants, this is one of those places people really do book in advance. When we looked there was the odd late dinner spot in June and July available.
The Devonshire (Soho) - It's one of the hardest places to get a table in London right now and bookings are released three weeks in advance on Thursdays mornings at 10.30am. Lunchtimes are easier to find a spot. Dinner is very, very hard - better set your alarm now. Failing that. you could always pop up on the day itself and see if anyone's cancelled. You might just get lucky.
Mountain (Soho) - Reservations open 60 days in advance, and there are usually spots left for walk-ins. If you can come in early evening your chances of a table improve dramatically. But if you're looking for a mid-evening table on a Friday or Saturday those are as rare as hen's teeth.
Gymkhana (Mayfair) - Bookings open two months in advance at 6am GMT (three months if you're booking a private room) so securing a table here is one that requires an early start. This was one of the hardest places we looked at to get a booking. You'd be looking at at least a month away for a Friday night booking and even then it would probably be post 10pm.
Fat Duck (Bray) - The Fat Duck sells experiences, rather than tables. Reservations are released three months in advance, on the last Friday of the month at 12pm UK time. But you probably don't need to be that organised; reservations were wide open. We could book for dinner in two nights time when we looked.
Plan in advance
Novikov (Mayfair) - They don't really release bookings at any given time. But there didn't appear to be any need to book tables. Dinner spots were free that evening (a Monday) and Saturday night bookings were possible if you didn't mind an early-ish or late table.
Sexy Fish (Mayfair) - This was a similar story to Novikov. On a Monday morning we could book pretty much any table that evening. Weekends were much harder with only a handful of very early evening tables possible on a Friday a few weeks in advance. Book a month out though and it's slightly easier to get a weekend table at a half-decent time.
Zuma (Knightsbridge) - Bookings open two calendar months in advance. That said we could find a table for dinner on a Thursday evening at a decent time about three weeks in advance.
Or just be prepared to get in the queue
Dishoom Carnaby Street - Dishoom doesn't take bookings in the evenings, hence the perma-queues. But if you can gather five friends or colleagues or even folk off the street together you can make a group reservation. That said, we couldn't find a Friday evening spot free at any point in the next month. If you can switch to lunch, you can make reservations for any group size.
Also see
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