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Comment by tigershark | Hacker News Reader

I’m not sure what is a 4 star restaurant given that the Micheline guide gives maximum 3 stars, but pretty much all starred restaurants want a deposit when reserving. If seriously there was someone dumb enough to do something like this, booking and cancelling continuously restaurants, then probably everyone would require a deposit when reserving and the deposit would be much bigger than today.

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I've never heard of deposits for reservations for a restaurant. And I've at least once made a reservation for restaurant with a Micheline star.

I'm not sure if this is common practice at least in Europe. I'm sure it's unheard-of in Turkey (and I've been lucky enough to make reservations for some high end and/or very popular restaurants).

May I ask in which countries you've experienced this in? I'm genuinely curious.

I travel all over the Us (Texas, NYC, and Cali mostly) and I've literally never had to put down any kind of deposit or anything of the sort when making dinner reservations, and I frequently make reservations at plenty of nice, upscale places.

It's common in San Francisco. Chubby Noodle is an example I booked today for a party of 8.

Many high-end restaurants in NY, CA, Berlin, Copenhagen, etc. require a deposit. See Tock (all prepaid, https://www.exploretock.com) or Resy (some prepaid, some cancellation fee, https://resy.com).

Auberge in Napa requires a valid CC to make a reservation https://aubergedusoleil.aubergeresorts.com/dining/

Funny enough they also use OpenTable, so no need for this Google stuff — just use the API or book through the site. You can also call them if for some reason that is preferable.

I’ve had reservations at upscale places in LA ask for a credit card up front and threaten a fee if I were to no-show, and some places have minimums for premium tables (e.g. 71Above window tables). A deposit up front doesn’t seem too far out of the question.

Italy, France, uk. Some of them were not even starred.

I live in Portland, OR and I have to pay up front for a number of places I go to. Usually not the full meal (I think one or two places do that) but there's a deposit essentially that is taken off your bill (or given back if you cancel 24-48 hours ahead of time) at a good chunk of the nice places around.

> I’m not sure what is a 4 star restaurant given that the Micheline guide gives maximum 3 stars

It's the user rating from Google Maps users. They are represented as stars and you can filter based on them.

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