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Queuing for restaurants: As life gets busier, Sydney diners draw the line

Kim Arlington

They say good things come to those who wait, but it seems Sydney diners are increasingly unwilling to stand in line.

With more options for dining out and online booking at people's fingertips, fewer diners are willing to queue for restaurant tables, food blogger Joe Tavella said.

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"People don't even want to wait for their coffee in the morning, let alone for a restaurant," Mr Tavella, one of the 2 Hungry Guys, said. "People have things to do. They're becoming less and less patient. They're less likely to go somewhere that's making it harder for them to sit in and eat."

Queues are still a feature outside Haymarket's Mamak, which takes no bookings. And plenty of foodies line up to sample the menu at places like Mr Wong and Restaurant Hubert, which only take dinner reservations for groups of six or more.

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But as user reviews on websites such as TripAdvisor show, no-bookings policies are not terribly popular with diners who, after waiting hours for a table, can find the food falls short of expectations.

Mr Tavella, who blogs with Luke Calopedos, eats out at least three times a week and prefers to book.

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"People sometimes say waiting makes it all the better," he said. "I think waiting makes you feel angry. It mars an experience when you're waiting for hours for a table at a hot, hip new restaurant. It's almost like you've got to pay some kind of penance to go there."

He recently arrived at a restaurant when it opened at 6pm to request a table. "The lady there looked me up and down and said, 'There are people who have been waiting since 5 o'clock. The only time we'll be able to seat you would be 10.30.' I just walked out – no restaurant is worth that wait."

According to new research from OpenTable, 30 per cent of people say holding out for a seat at a no-bookings restaurant is the kind of wait that annoys them most, while 23 per cent were most irritated by waiting for public transport.

The survey of 1265 Australians also found the average time people are willing to wait for a table is 18 minutes, while one in 10 refuses to wait at all.

"As lifestyles become busier, diners don't have valuable time to wait for a restaurant table," said Lisa Hasen, vice president Asia Pacific at OpenTable, the world's leading provider of online restaurant reservations.

Restaurateur Sam Christie said restaurants were adapting to diners' needs. He manages Cho Cho San and The Apollo in Potts Point, and Surry Hills institution Longrain, which catered to walk-ins only for over a decade but now takes reservations.

Many diners preferred to have their plans locked in, Christie said, especially those with families and more commitments.

"As people's lives become more structured, their dining habits become more structured. The people that don't prefer bookings have fewer responsibilities ... they're more spur-of-the-moment."

Christie said that as well as helping to counter the problem of no-shows, which affects every restaurant every night, taking walk-in guests allowed every table to be filled and turned over efficiently. "If you're good enough at what you do, you're constantly full," he said.

Hannah Kirsh, the business development manager with Lotus Dining, which has restaurants in the CBD, Barangaroo and Walsh Bay, said there was "definitely a large swing to people wanting to be able to book, to avoid that irritation of queuing up".

"People are so used to booking online now and so expect to do that," she said. It still allowed for spontaneity, she said, with many diners making reservations on the run. "People are out drinking and deciding where to go."

But spontaneity is not for everyone. Mother-of-two Tess Gordon said she didn't go out for dinner without booking first. "Time is precious, especially when you have kids," she said. "You can get lucky and walk in somewhere, but it's not worth taking the chance."

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