Say Good-Bye to Yesterday!

Remember when you used to have to call in a reservation? If you're anything like me, that means you would completely forget to do it earlier in the week and would wait until the day before to do it only to find out that the only reservation available is one that's way passed your bedtime. Well, thanks to OpenTable you can make reservations for most restaurants online. This website has quickly become my best friend and should be every restaurant hopper's tool. It's free to join, has restaurants listed for most major cities, and the best part is that you can look at individual restaurants to see what the dress code is, payment type accepted, cuisine type, and a whole slew of other things. As of today, they have 173 Boston restaurants listed on there. I think this website is slowly catching on too. I remember being on Tapeo's website two months ago and them having listed that they did not accepted online reservations and now they do! A similar thing happened with Pho Republique when we went last summer. I called (and I did it early too...) to see if they accepted reservations and I was told that they did not accept them for parties smaller than 4. And now they are listed on there and do accept reservations for 2!

I think the best way to really convey the greatness of OpenTable is through this story. Almost a year ago my friend told me that he was planning on going on a date with some girl. Of course, as soon as he told me this I asked him what area he was interested in and began my restaurant search. I sent him an email with the names and menues of about 10 different restaurants (I put stars next to the ones I really liked) and he decided on Metro 9 in Framingham. Mind you, he was looking for reservations for the same night and the restaurant didn't open until 5pm and it was a Thursday night. So off I go to look on OpenTable to see if they had the restaurant listed and they did! He joined OpenTable and made himself a reservation for dinner. When he met up with his date at Metro 9, the restaurant was full and there was a wait. They went up to the hostess desk and she asked them if they had a reservation. Not knowing that he made a reservation, the date replied 'no.' My friend corrected his date and told the hostess that they indeed did have a reservation. Needless to say his date was stunned and impressed. I definitely took partial credit for their date going well since I had done the restaurant research and introduced OpenTable to my friend.

So......the morale of this post is (1) never make a reservation late again when you can do it over the internet and (2) impress your date by making a reservation online and ahead of time.