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For all of the myths that might give you pause at a restaurant, like the old wives’ tail that specials are just deceptive leftovers, some assumptions are genuine red flags. So, while you can actually order fish on Monday, you just might want to skip it — and everything else for that matter — at a totally empty restaurant.
Beloved, decently liked, and even just generally serviceable restaurants tend to have people in them. Sometimes, a lot of people. It’s why there are schemes and strategies to score seemingly impossible restaurant reservations. If an otherwise promising place is a ghost town when you approach as a pop-in or arrive for an online booking, it likely isn’t because you’re the first genius to give it a chance. It’s because the potential customer base has already rendered its review by virtue of its absence. The food is either bad or too expensive, and the space is either uncomfortable, understaffed, or obviously haunted. Otherwise, there would be people in the seats — with a few notable exceptions.
Times when it might be okay to try an empty restaurant
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Someone has to be every restaurant’s very first customer — and some day, that might be you. There are plenty of high profile spots whose time slots fill up well before the doors even open, but there are also smaller operations that nobody yet knows about. Food lovers tend to catch on quick, though; so depending on how populated the area is, newness only excuses the tumbleweeds for so long.
A restaurant’s shoulder times — off-peak hours when fewer folks are out to dine — are also less likely to be populated. A place that might be incredibly busy at 8 a.m. might look a lot different at 4 p.m. Visiting at those less-coveted moments is even one of the easiest ways to win the reservation game. You just shouldn’t expect to be situated in a sea of other clever gourmands. A place that doesn’t seem so hot at what could fairly be described as “linner” might actually turn out great. Worst case scenario, it isn’t. At least you’ll have learned to join the crowds and never go back.
