Dinner reservations at Tatiana are ‘impossible’ to get, so I spent a month trying

Published Apr 25, 2024 at 2:01 p.m. ET

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Published Apr 25, 2024 at 2:01 p.m. ET

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Dinner reservations have never been straightforward in New York City: The wealthiest and most powerful will always get access to dine where others can’t. But in the past year, the exclusivity has achieved new heights.

While it seems like there have never been more ways to book a reservation, it also seems like the chances of snagging a table at the most sought-after spots have never been lower.

Aspiring diners post longing comments online: “Gave up trying to get a res after almost a year” (Don Angie); “OMG we are so jealous!!!!!!” (Rao’s); “Will I ever get into 4 Charles though? Unclear.”

Computer programs known as bots, which can scoop up reservations on apps like OpenTable and Resy in seconds, are a big problem. Bot-acquired tables are then enjoyed by the bot programmers themselves or willing customers who pay hundreds of dollars on markets like Appointment Trader.

So a few weeks ago when a friend challenged me to get a table at Tatiana, rated by New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells to be the #1 restaurant in New York, overconfidence got the best of me and I was like, it’s on.

Wells’ love letter to Tatiana reads more like a hero’s profile than a review. The restaurant will “talk” to me; the egusi dumplings seem to defy physics; the goat curry patties “sing.”

Wells’ article made me think of Anton Ego, the fictional restaurant critic in Disney’s “Ratatouille,” whose skeptical frown gives way to rapture as vivid flavors transport him to the kitchen table in his childhood home. Ego's eyes roll around as he chews and moans. His pen, his responsibilities and his jaded adultness fall to the floor as he digs in.

While Wells’ narrative on Tatiana drew me in, pragmatism also played a part. Despite Tatiana's critical acclaim, I had a notion that snagging a reservation there might be easier than at hotspots like The Polo Bar, where the Clintons, Swifts and Paltrows of the world are reported to dine. According to Wells, Tatiana is “extravagant and homey” — perhaps more about food and service than rubbing elbows.

First, I set some rules for my challenge.

I started where any savvy researcher should: Reddit. Things weren't looking good. “Tatiana reservations are comically impossible,” according to a person who was moving out of New York and wanted an epic meal before leaving.

But I did glean some useful information. Tatiana’s reservations are released daily at noon, 28 days out, a fact I corroborated via a Resy post and a call to the restaurant, which referred me to online booking. I set a daily reminder and went on with my life.

I visited Tatiana’s online reservations page a few minutes before noon the next day. I had run through the process beforehand and found I could navigate to the newly released date faster on the restaurant’s website than on Resy.

At 11:59 a.m., I started refreshing. And to my surprise, blue buttons reflecting available tables appeared at noon. I couldn’t believe it. I clicked on a 6:30 p.m. button, thinking I’d crushed this challenge.

But then, to my horror, I was directed to a Resy login page. I could have sworn I was already logged into Resy!?

I rushed to autofill my information, and after submitting it I was faced with a test asking if I was human.

Knowing my Tatiana reservation was on the line, I tried to remain composed. I believe I was able to successfully pinpoint all the fire hydrants. But the crosswalks were tricky. ("Do I see the corner of a white stripe in the road in that little square?") I failed and had to complete a third round, which involved identifying bicycles.

The three-act dramedy played out over maybe 45 seconds, which I now know is an eternity in the dinner reservations game. I’d finally proven I wasn’t a bot, but my table was gone, along with all the rest.

Tables at Tatiana are booked within minutes of becoming available.

While I was disappointed that my beginner’s luck hadn’t panned out, I’d actually seen available tables! I had to make sure I was logged into Resy next time. And maybe this was just a numbers game, and I'd eventually get lucky if I kept trying. With an irrational sense of hope, I set up daily reminders.

The next day, I logged on again a few minutes before noon. But when I refreshed at the prescribed time, no tables appeared. This repeated over the next few days.

Click fatigue started to set in. I’d see my 10-minute warning to log into Resy. I’d finish writing an email or making a cup of tea. And boom, it was 12:03 p.m. and I’d blown it.

Maybe the experience of the woman who said it took her six months to get a reservation was typical after all. But more of the same only gets you more of the same — in this case, nothing. It was time for something new.

I went ahead and created a few Resy “notify” alerts, where the app is meant to send you a push notification if and when a table opens up on a date and in a time range of your choosing.

This is a useful strategy if you can be somewhere with little notice. I’ve heard of some savvy diners who set up notify alerts at their top choices, around 12 to 48 hours before they want to go. If a table gets canceled at the last minute, Resy sends an alert so you can snag it. I know of one person who’s scored primetime tables at Libertine, I Sodi, and Masalawala & Sons this way. (Not Tatiana, though.)

But I wasn’t trying to book a specific date; any Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. would be fine. And I do need advance notice of my plans. Adding a notification every day felt like a lot of work, especially since some users mentioned this strategy hadn’t worked for them.

As I ventured deeper into my ludicrous rabbit hole, I found a Reddit thread dedicated to difficult-to-get Resy reservations. One of the commenters mentioned a newer app, TableOne, that supposedly would ping me faster than Resy if a table at Tatiana opened up. I downloaded TableOne and invited the founders, Tarek Arafat and Frank Besson, for a chat.

“Reservations started as something that people could [get for] free, and have kind of cannibalized into something that's a little bit gross,” Arafat said.

TableOne uses bots to flag newly available reservations at a few dozen of New York’s most in-demand restaurants. But instead of selling the reservations, the app quickly directs the user to Resy’s booking pathway. (TableOne bills itself as platform agnostic. It isn't focused on Resy by design, but because it's currently the dominant platform for the most-coveted restaurants.)

Besson said TableOne can catch new openings faster than Resy’s notify feature does. He attributes this to the much smaller number of restaurants his app is tracking, as opposed to the thousands on Resy.

“The goal of it was to kind of equip regular people with the same technology that bots are using to steal reservations — therefore hopefully minimizing the effect,” said Besson. The founders, both youngish newcomers to New York, said they developed TableOne after using the underlying tech to score primetime dinner reservations for their girlfriends at Carbone. They said that since launching in the App Store last September, they've garnered more than 12,000 users, all by word of mouth.

Besson said TableOne sends out an average of 1.6 million notifications per day, an indication of the scale of New York’s reservations problem. Based on user data and surveys, the founders estimate that their app is used to book more than 37,000 reservations monthly.

The app is free, though a pay-what-you-wish option is rolling out this week to help support the development of new product features.

"OK, worth a try," I thought. I set up a flexible alert for Tatiana, for any Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. Based on TableOne’s data, I had an 8% chance of nabbing a table.

A few days later, a notification came through — Tatiana! The app pushed me to a Resy page showing a table for Thursday at 7:45 p.m. Perfect. I record-scratched everything and had to shush my 6-year-old mid-sentence.

But my heart sank when I was soon directed to a Resy login page. Nooooo! I could have sworn I was logged in?! I completed my two-step verification and aced the are-you-human tests.

But the bots won again. The table was gone.

I tried reaching out to Tatiana to get its take on this hoopla, but the restaurant did not reply to multiple emails.

I know, "duh." But this has been a surprising sticking point for me. I’m not just hanging out on Resy all day, OK?

My new plan is to lean on TableOne but check my Resy login status more frequently. The deeper I wade into this territory, the more trapped I feel by the tech.

Don’t pay for a reservation. That’ll only incentivize this “black market” of dinner tables, making more reservations even more impossible to snag for the average diner.

A representative for Resy acknowledged the ever-evolving bots problem and affirmed the company has a team devoted to addressing it. Accounts that violate Resy’s terms of service, which specify “personal and non-commercial use,” are terminated.

The representative also noted that the reservations getting attention for being “impossible” represent a very small segment of Resy’s restaurant offerings.

In my opinion, trying to snag a tough table is a worthy challenge. I plan to keep trying. But if you ever find yourself on this journey, brace yourself: It’s isolating, somewhat humiliating and a little ironic, considering that my goal is a communal, soul-feeding, real-life experience with a good friend.

As for Arafat? His app TableOne scored him a table at Tatiana a few months back. “It was so good, absolutely incredible," he said. "Definitely get the short rib. It just falls right off the bone.”

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