So far this year, I have heroically failed to get reservations for dinner at Sushi Tetsu, Chiltern Firehouse, Bocca di Lupo and several more of London's most sought-after restaurants. When in New York, I attempted to get a seat at Sushi Nakazawa they neither returned my calls nor answered my emails. (At the time, I imagined them sniggering as the next impassioned plea came in.) Even so, the idea of paying to secure an "impossible" restaurant booking is absolute anathema to me. But a new breed of app is offering us the opportunity to do just that.
With the behemoth of the reservations sites, OpenTable, the restaurants pay for the reservation service themselves. But for the would-be hot ticket-scorer, it's worse than useless. I have long suspected that some of the more savvy operators manipulate availability in any case I have seen the hallowed 7-9pm spots appear to be booked out for weeks in advance only to finally turn up to a room that's far from full. Which is why I, in true Luddite fashion, usually use the phone. But these next-generation apps the likes of Resy and queue-jumping Shout are causing real heat in the US aren't charging the restaurants, they are charging us, the diners.
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