What’s Wrong with Portland Restaurants’ No-Reservation Policy?

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Sunday, August 31, 2014

Caryn Brooks, GoLocalPDX Contributor

Through a series of time-management bungles, a friend and I finally found ourselves ready to go out for dinner at 9:30 p.m. on a Saturday night.

When it came time to pick a place, I grew exorbitantly happy despite my gnawing hunger. Because we were eating so fashionably late, we could go to Ox.

This extremely popular no-reservation restaurant, which specializes in Argentinian meat and two-hour waits, isn’t a place I patronize often, because while I love meat, I hate waits. The last time I was there was when I found myself suddenly free for a celebratory dinner at 5 p.m.

That was two years ago.

On this night, we sashayed in at 9:30 and were seated right away and it was a great meal. See you in another two years on a random night, Ox!

The no-reservation, high-ticket restaurant is very Portland with its undercurrent of punk rock insouciance. Many big cities have famous lowbrow joints that have people lining up for hours, but white-tableclothed restaurants with $30 entrees are another thing altogether.

While New Yorkers are in the midst of sweaty moral debates about a new breed of apps that sell reservations during prime times at popular restaurants, Portlanders’ conversations tend to hover around its chaotic, no-reservation scene and whether these places are worth the wait. 

Punk scene putting on a tie

But that conversation may need to change. There are signals that Portland’s punk scene might be ready to put on a tie.

Clyde Common recently (and quietly) started taking reservations online through OpenTable. And Portland restaurateur John Gorham (he of places like Toro Bravo and Tasty & Sons that practically invented the never-ending wait) is accepting reservations at his just-opened Pearl District restaurant, Mediterranean Exploration Company.

It’s not surprising that Portland may be ready to move into a more mature form of hospitality as its upstart restaurants evolve into standard-bearers. If you want to grow old with your customers, you have to let your customers grow old with you.

The no-reservation format is at first blush democratic, but it actually does favor a particularly privileged group: people with both an unlimited amount of time on their hands and a seemingly cannabis-inflected level of patience. These are the same people seen all over the city at odd daytime hours leisurely drinking lattes, reading books, and still somehow able to pay their rent.

Bless them. But the thing about these folks is that they’re also fickle: They’ll be on to the next long wait faster than you can say shiso.

No matter how good they are, reservation-free restaurants generally aren’t the places you go for milestone occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, and engagements, and that can affect a consumer’s long-term relationship with the place. It’s hard to be a regular at a place you can’t patronize regularly.

That said, it’s probably just as hard to bond with a restaurant that does offer reservations but has no primetime openings unless you're someone or you know someone who is someone.

Caryn Brooks is a former Associated Press and Time Magazine staffer who now lives in Portland. 

Photo Credit: Jason Lander via Compfight cc

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