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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

It's hard to blame Kevin Alexander for this, because Steve Stanich played ball with the review, like most restaurants would. If he wanted to, he could have asked not to be featured in the list, and Alexander probably would have complied; otherwise, he could have done other things to make it clear to his customers that he wasn't interested in fulfilling the role the ranking carved out for him.

We see this effect in Chicago regularly, as I'm sure people in NY and LA do as well; there's a biennial ritual of naming the new "best burger" in the city (it's Kuma's! no, now it's Au Cheval! no, Au Cheval is franchising, time for something fancier --- Mott Street! no wait, the Loyalist†). It definitely "ruins" the restaurant, in the sense that it becomes basically impossible to eat there anymore. But it's hard to fault the businesses for going along! They're there to make a living for themselves.

To the commenters saying Stanich should simply raise its prices: there's a price ceiling for that burger. It's not a fancy chef burger; it's a standard burger shop burger executed well. It seems like the only real scaling option Steve Stanich has, if he's not willing to piss off part of his clientele (a reasonable option!) is to partner and franchise.

† I'm particularly irritated about Loyalist because their bar has one of the best amaro collections in Chicago

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> To the commenters saying Stanich should simply raise its prices: there's a price ceiling for that burger. It's not a fancy chef burger;

If you have a five hour lineup for a burger, you need to raise your prices at least a little bit. You'll make more money overall, and your customers will be happy.

You can do that to a point, but if what you're serving is simply a well-executed diner burger, then, like I said, there's a ceiling. You can't charge $30 for that. Or, you can, but you'll create more problems than you'll solve.

This guy ate at 330 different burger restaurants. He has a finely-tuned metric for what a good burger is (his #3 is also a neighborhood place he grew up with). He's set up to appreciate what Stanich is actually accomplishing with his burger. The average foodie tourist is unlikely to arrive armed with that context; they'll pay $30 for the burger, expect a revelation, and leave unhappy.

I think this is the In-n-out effect - people who grew up on it see it as a vastly superior version of McDs, Wendy's etc for the same price, and are understandably effusive about this. But visitors expect something profound instead of a well executed fast food style burger.

That's exactly what it is, a very well executed fast food burger. I mean, I'm not going to trade it for a real good local burger joint burger (Superburger in my area), but that joint burger is 2x times the size plus fixings (depending on what's ordered) and costs 3x the In-n-out burger, and doesn't have a drive through. When you start adding all the variables in, the picture becomes clear.

Oh, and as someone that gets fast food burgers once every week or two, Wendy's has always been particularly high on my list, and McDonald's recent switch to non-frozen patties for quarter pounders has also significantly raised the quality of that product. Even so, In-n-out is still better overall than either in my opinion.

As crazy as it sounds, there are people who are adamant that In & Out is not just good relative to fast food, but in fact one of the finest places you can eat, at any price.

Source: I've spoken with a few.

In the city I live in, a proposal for an In & Out came up. It split down the city in half for reasons; traffic, "In & Out is great", "In & Out is awful", and so forth. Nothing's come of it and as far as I know the lot remains defunct.

Elsewise I too encounter people who hold In & Out on a pedestal simply because of their food. Personally, I've tried and honestly but I just can't. McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Jack In The Box all have better burgers and fries than In & Out for me, but say that to the devout and you'll be shown the door faster than they'll tell you to go to Hell. It's amazing.

Campbell? https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/07/25/in-n-out-burger-propo...

In n out is good, but it’s still fast food. That is true. Also, people act it’s Exclaburger instead of a good meal.

Why would you ever expect more than a well executed fast food style burger from, well, a burger. That’s literally what burger means as far as I’m concerned.

There are certainly non-fast-food restaurants that sell burgers.

To give a random example that comes to mind: the burger is one of the most iconic/famous things on the menu at the Spotted Pig, which has a Michelin star. You can't really compare it to McDonald's any more than you could compare any other dish to the fast food version.

There may indeed be a ceiling. It's not even near whatever he's charging that leads to a 5 hour lineup.

Similar situation, my mother is a lawyer mostly handling wills/estates and real estate deals. Small town law firm, sole practitioner. She's got too many clients, too much work, and she hates turning people away. She's got a small army of secretaries working their asses off. It's good business, but she wants to do less so that eventually she can retire.

She's trying a new strategy: raising prices every 3 months until there's exactly as much work as she wants to do. If things get a bit dry, she can lower prices a bit again. But by fluctuating ever so slightly, she can choose how much work she wants to do.

I feel like this should be fairly obvious business economics. If there is too much demand for your product for you to service, you should raise your prices until the demand matches what you can produce. It's basic supply and demand.

The opposite applies as well. If you have excess capacity that's going unused, you should lower your prices (down to the marginal cost anyway).

Of course there's a ceiling, but you're assuming the ceiling is based on the burger. It's not. It's based on the demand for the burger, and that demand is way, way higher than the supply, so the ceiling is higher than the current price. Pretty simple.

And yes, you can only raise it to a certain point, but you only need to raise it to a certain point: that certain point is the ceiling.

And you don't need to jump from $10 to $30 all at once. You just need to keep raising the price until you find the ceiling where your demand is more reasonable. It's probably more like 30-50% more, rather than 200% more, but who knows. Or better yet, charge more for peak times (like by offering a killer happy hour special during the slow times) to smooth out demand and also serve people who don't want to pay $30 for a burger.

Pricing that is based on cost plus some margin for overhead is so dumb. Price based on demand!

This is a terrible term but I'll use it because it works here: the genre of burger we are talking about here is "cheap burger" (I mean that as a quality/experience descriptor, not price). It's a relatively thin, wide ground chuck patty on a good-but-standard bun; the only "interesting" ingredient they use is hamburger relish.

So, yeah I am explicitly saying that the price ceiling and the demand for the burger aren't as neatly related as it looks, because the substitutes for this particular burger are going to be very close to it in quality (it's possible that for something close to 50% of patrons, this burger will be perceived as "worse" than other cheap burgers they've had, because opinions vary).

If this was that Raoul's burger, where it's ground short rib and brisket with a triple cream brie and a cognac cream dipping sauce, I'd be right there with you. But Stanich is apparently just a cheap diner burger very well executed (in Alexander's estimation, but I have no reason to doubt him). If you charge $30 for that, people will pay (once), and then feel ripped off. For a little while. Then word will get out.

It probably is the best cheap diner burger in America! The dude did the research! I'm just saying, you probably can't charge $30 for a cheap burger, sustainably. You'll do OK in the short term, and then irreversibly harm the business.

Scaling out makes a lot more sense. He probably should franchise.

Again, you're just comparing burgers in isolation, but that's not how it works. This isn't delivery. People pay extra for ambiance, for service, for exclusivity, for visuals, etc. The fact that people are standing in line for 5 hours means that they don't view it as just another cheap burger. They're willing to pay more. I'm half convinced that people in NYC will pay more BECAUSE they stood in line. How else would you know if it's good if there's not a bunch of New Yorkers validating your choices by waiting in the freezing cold too?? :)

And you don't need to charge $30. Charging a few extra bucks probably solves this problem without the downsides you're talking about.

Finally, I'm also not convinced those problems you suggest would be caused by charging $30 are actually problems. Maybe people feel like it wasn't worth it, but so what? Word gets out that the $30 burgers are overpriced...does that mean people will stop coming? There's an entire class of overpriced crappy restaurants that stay busy because of former glory, or location, or whatever. Like almost every big restaurant in a tourist zone of major world cities.

And if they DO stop coming, then doesn't that solve the original problem? Crowds dry up, you drop the prices back down, life goes on.

Just seems like almost anything would be better than throwing your hands up and shutting down the restaurant. Which ironically isn't even what happened here!

The subtext of my argument is that they are standing in line not knowing what they're going to get, expecting (or at least hoping for) a revelation that is not going to come. I agree with Alexander that these burgers are the best burgers (I haven't had this one but am familiar with the genre! The best Chicago burgers from the same genre!), but I think Alexander has, ironically, a more sophisticated take on these things than his readers do.

Remember, the 2nd place burger on his list is an absurd chef burger, even by the standards of chef burgers.

My favorite Chicago food writer has a bit about NYC pizza (he's a former NY-er) that I think captures the spirit of where I'm coming from, which is that the food tourists that seek out the best NYC slice have missed the point entirely, and that the best NYC slice is always within 1-2 blocks of where you're standing.

There's a distinction between being "great" and being "destination food" that this whole article is lamenting people --- I'd include this thread among those people --- not understanding. It's funny to see that misunderstanding expressed on HN in the language of HN --- product pricing and product/market fit.

You have to acknowledge the point he is making, he said you don't have to get to $30 to find the right spot, moreover making it a franchise will definitely take away the lore of the place and quality control. Better to raise the price but have a reward system that keeps the price lower for those who have supported the restaurant for years.

> He probably should franchise.

That assumes that whatever it is that he was doing before things blew up can be scaled. I think it's quite possible that it can't. Particularly as, according to Alexander, the things that pushed the place over the top were intangibles about atmosphere, which isn't reproducible.

Also, "scaling" assumes that the owner wants to scale. If he's only interested in operating a neighborhood burger diner, he probably doesn't.

The article talks about him actively considering franchising. And: I doubt there's really anything to the burger here that can't be replicated. Further: he doesn't have to replicate it perfectly, just enough to serve the local customers he wants to serve while the foodies queue up at the original shop.

> If you charge $30 for that, people will pay (once), and then feel ripped off. For a little while. Then word will get out.

This sounds like exactly what Stanich would have wanted.

> If you charge $30 for that, people will pay (once), and then feel ripped off.

Waiting 5h has EXACTLY the same effect. The difference is that in one situation, he will make 10x more profit out of it and will be able to ride the hard months later on.

The key isn't just higher prices. It is long term revenue from people who are liekly to buy repeatedly.

My solution would be $30 for tourists, $6 for anyone with a Portland ID and a loyalty card that you get in three seconds. That solves both issues mentioned (one-off, buckelist tickers and loyalty to locals).

> He has a finely-tuned metric for what a good burger is

This is one way to put it. Lets pretend that every burger isn't different, every cook isn't different, ingredients aren't the same from day to day, etc... Then it all becomes having the right combination on the day you get there. And this ignores how the reviewer is feeling, and what they ate and drank already that day and the day before.

You raise some very relevant biases of critics, I wonder how this is accounted for?

Normally critics will visit a restaurant three times before writing a review. Obviously tough to do in this situation, though.

> This guy ate at 330 different burger restaurants. He has a finely-tuned metric for what a good burger is (his #3 is also a neighborhood place he grew up with). He's set up to appreciate what Stanich is actually accomplishing with his burger. The average foodie tourist is unlikely to arrive armed with that context; they'll pay $30 for the burger, expect a revelation, and leave unhappy.

Rubbish. Here's 2006 list of burgers that you must have before you die from GQ:

https://www.gq.com/story/hamburger-death-eat

By Alan Richman who "traveled 23,750 miles and consumed more than 150,000 calories while taking the measure of 162 burgers across the country—with one goal: To find you the best damned assemblage of ground beef and buns this country serves up" -- the boss of a Thrillist writer probably did not even know about that infamous GQ list.

* Number 1 in NYC : Peter Luger. Still there. Accolades did not kill it.

* Number 1 in Philadelphia : Rouge. Rouge burger - still there. Restaurant is going downhill but it has changed owners multiple times -- Neil, who opened it, died a couple of weeks ago.

* Number 1 in Philadelphia (small sliders) : Barclay's Prime - of course it is also still there.

Oh, and yes Rouge raised its prices to handle the load that article generated - the place maybe sat 50, including the bar. And now since it is not as popular as it once was, the prices are lower.

> This guy ate at 330 different burger restaurants. He has a finely-tuned metric for what a good burger is (his #3 is also a neighborhood place he grew up with).

He was just not very good as the closure of his favorite burger places demonstrated.

> He was just not very good as the closure of his favorite burger places demonstrated.

Is that supposed to imply that as long as the food is good the restaurant will succeed? I've always viewed the food as being good as an almost essential, but by no means sufficient component to a restaurant's success. I've seen plenty of places with good food close.

The Rouge burger was a custom meat blend on challah with gruyere. It's a chef burger. What we're talking about is a ground chuck diner burger on a sesame bun. If this was the Raoul burger, 12 served a day, ground short rib and brisket, I'd be right there with you.

Rouge burger was not a custom meat blend. It was a rouge steak ground from steak into ground meat for the burger as the burger was ordered because there was no space in the kitchen - it was that small.

But that's not the point - the list was of burgers: roll, meat patty, cheese, maybe some other stuff. The one that he raved about had gooish cheese etc. Were there also caramelized onions? It was the "we too can make a burger like those fancy places and not a greasy spoon diner next door".

Burger is a burger. The better the burger the higher its price could be if there are people willing to wait for it.

Chef's burger or no chef's burger - i mean hell, NY Burger Co's burgers beat some of the chef's burgers.

That's simply not true. Chef burgers and diner burgers are not the same product, which you can verify for yourself by reading Yelp reviews of the restaurant we're talking about and seeing the shocked comments from people who expected a transcendent chef burger experience from this place which only ever served diner burgers.

I'd rather have a good diner burger than a chef burger, but the whole point of the story is that the author of this ranking had one intention, his readers took away another, and the result was problematic for the restaurant.

Of course they are the same product. The product is a burger. Which is why the burger from Le Bec Fin was a flop while NY Burger Company's burgers are success. On the other hand Peter Luger burger or Rouge Burger or Parc Burger are successes.

It is unquestionable that the reviewer had no clue about a good burger - he picked OK burgers in OK places that were barely hanging on which is why his review targets did poorly. Compare that to burgers ( or restaurants ) picked by the Guy on DDD - in Philly that would be Good Dog, with its Good Dog burger - nothing special except that the cheese is injected into the patty, while it was cooked well enough by people who aren't that skilled at cooking. The wait went from 10-20 minutes to 1.5-2 hours. The place continued to sling the burgers ( and other stuff ) and continued to be popular year after year because unlike the clueless reviewer at Thrillist Guy ( who has a boatload of other problems ) at least can identify a good burger in a place that won't go out of business if its business increases by 400% ( not to mention 10% that his review did -- all of those numbers are well known - Food Network has all the numbers because they do hundreds of shows based on that. The so called magnificent changes in the fortunes of restaurants after Ramsay/Mission Impossible/etc mean 15-30% of receipt increases ) Good Dog was an anomaly in that because they did 3x in business based on the show airing for nearly a year ( DDD shows do ~30%-45% boost on average boost)

Exactly. There's a fine line between a reasonable price with a long line... and raising it where people say "they're price gouging, ugh!" and lose your customers forever because you're no longer someone with a passion for the best burger, you're a sellout for the money.

Supply and demand doesn't work as smoothly as you think. It's the same reason why huge TicketMaster fees exist -- so artists can sell tickets at a "fair" price (any higher would piss off fans) and TM takes the flak for all the "fees", many of which go to the artist/management in the end anyways. Or why shows sell out instead of raising prices -- people simply revolt at pricing they perceive as "unfair". And once they do, it's hard to get the good will back.

That's actually really interesting about TicketMaster. I can't find any info about it online; but if that's actually what's happening, it's genius—I never thought about that possibility.

This Freakonomics podcast was where it originated, I believe: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/live-event-ticket-market-scr...

There was also a good discussion about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18025209

A simple fix for that is to put up a big sign that says "Tourist tax in effect" and make a $25 rebate for any regular customer or person that can prove a local address; or simply assert with a straight face to the staff they live on this and this street. It's a bit of a hassle for the locals but the place is saved.

Sure, the tourists will attack you on Yelp and Instagram and accuse you of price gouging. But to hell with them and their opinion, on the long run only the opinion of the locals matters.

> put up a big sign that says "Tourist tax in effect"

No need to be that adversarial. Put up a high price and advertise a discount for anyone who can show ID with a local address.

This is already very common in places with lots of rich tourists but low local incomes. Hawaii, for example.

That's how it works where I live. You show your driver's license, you get the local discount.

Vegas?

No, but I have a very good friend in Vegas who says it's similar there.

> No, but I have a very good friend in Vegas who says it's similar there.

Also the strip is where the tourists are, and isn't technically the city of Las Vegas.

A lot of the behaviors people engage in on the strip would get you thrown out of a place that's more locals oriented. They don't take shit off strip.

Pedant> Yes it is technically the city of Las Vegas. The strip has a Las Vegas, NV address.

USPS addresses do not exactly map onto local jurisdictions.

Who says TicketMaster didn't raise ticket prices?

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/ticketmaster-c...

Sure, but raising prices by 20% might not do that, but cut the line by 60% without eliminating it.

Thanks for this comment thread, I found it really insightful. Nuance on HN?!

> Nuance on HN?!

Where else‽

OMG an interrobang, my eyes can hardly believe it. Haha. I love the idea (I constantly use '?!' in online chat) but they don't look so great. Also, in chess, !? and ?! have different meanings..

¿¡

This page (in the comments at the bottom of the page) has spanish-speakers using both that and the reversed version, and even the 'gnaborretni' (inverted interrobang) :

https://spanish.stackexchange.com/questions/137/origin-and-u...

He would, in all likelihood, lose his regulars that had come in for years. For people who just want to make a living, and enjoy life doing it, that might be like losing all your friends.

The article explicitly goes into this, and in my reading at least is the entire point of the story.

I wonder how price-insensitive people pursuing the 'best burger' are.

They've probably made a trip to go eat it, what's another $5 or $10?

That's exactly the problem! All the viable price increases won't deter the tourists.

Nor your regulars. And that is what they care about, not the fad of people coming in from a list.

Solution may have been to charge very high prices, with discounts if you show drivers license with local address. Then share part of the extra revenue with employees

That's introducing complexity and ability to game the rules for no reason. The solution will come about naturally, either people realize the time waiting for "top ranked" places are not worth it, or other restauranteurs will figure out there is profit to be made and open more restaurants.

I made a similar comment further down, but if Stanich's took reservations and just held tables for walk ins (and treated regulars/locals preferentially) they would probably have been fine. Takes more front of house effort though, and he probably still should've raised his prices a bit.

If "Raoul's only makes 12 burgers a night." can fly, it seems like _something_ can be done here too. That said, it sounds like the guy has some complicating life circumstances, and maybe we should just all get out of his way and let him take a few months or a few years to straighten things out before he parlays this enormous PR win into a new venture.

In an episode of the anime series "Food Wars", the main character basically does this at the restaurant he is assigned to internship at.

He and another chef student are assigned a local restaurant which is regularly and completely swamped by commuters; commuters flood the restaurant, everything is crowded, kitchen is over crazy, and then everyone evaporates to catch the next train home. Every day. Local eaters be damned. On the surface business is booming [daily rush of commuters!] but in reality there's a struggle.

Main character figures to go "reservation only". Walk-in commuters not allowed unless they have a reservation; no walk-by "I'll grab some sushi". Owners freak but are desperate... and things work out. A local comes in for his reservation and comments how he hasn't been able to come by for months because it's always so crowded, but he's oh so happy that the waitress remembers his regular order. Restaurant survives and within sanity.

> It definitely "ruins" the restaurant, in the sense that it becomes basically impossible to eat there anymore

Worse. The people who eat there change from those who enjoy food to those who enjoy the idea. That takes the right kind of pressure off the chef and owners and substitutes it with the wrong kind, e.g. Instagrammability.

I was just going to say - if you get some viral exposure as a business, you get customers who only want to be associated with something popular. It's probably an odd feeling; sure you're successful, but it's not because of your hard work, it's because of the journalist's.

Au Cheval is easily the most overrated burger (and perhaps restaurant) in Chicago. Hey guess what, if you make a 12oz burger, put three slices of cheese on it, place it on a buttered roll, then put pork belly, a fried egg, and mayo on it, it will taste good. And it will also make you want to freakin die the moment you're done because you just consumed 25,000 calories. But people will wait literally 2.5 hours for this anyway because hey that's where Grant Achatz goes to eat burgers.

Grant Achatz is famously a fiend for Potbelly (a cheap chain that is like a notch up from Quiznos). I don't know that it's fair to ding him with Au Cheval.

I hear good things about the rest of Au Cheval's menu!

Yeah, would be nice to try it but the wait make Hot Doug's look brief.

I once waited in line at Hot Doug's and when I reached the front, a dude in a limo pulled up and offered to buy my place in line for $100. I didn't take him up on it, but one of the dudes I was there with did!

It turns out though that there was a secret to Hot Doug's, which is that you could just fax an order in and then skip the line to pick it up. I always worried that the line would murder me when I did that.

You didn't even need to fax, you could call. That was literally the only way I would go after my first trip when I stood in that miserable line. Originally you could call in a takeout order anytime. Then he limited it to weekdays. Then he cut Friday's. Sometime in the last year of operation he stopped phone-in orders altogether. There was nothing better than saying, "Excuse me" 20 times as I bypassed the line to pickup an order, as the people standing in line had emotions ranging from bewilderment to rage. Then I would walk out with a bag of food and a smile on my face and everyone was in shock. In summer I would just plop down on that picnic table next door. Good times.

Hey now. Potbelly's a solid two or three steps up from Quiznos. I'll house a Potbelly sandwich anytime--you won't catch me dead in a Quiznos.

I completely disagree with your opinion, but to each their own. Also, people are comfortable with the 2.5 hour wait (or more!) because they can just go hang in one of the many bars in the area during that time.

You can now get the Au Cheval burger at lots of places easily. I do 3 greens regularly. It’s a fine burger.

The real shame is that Au Cheval used to be a nice spot for a beer & burger on a street that was expensive.

Still hard to find good priced, good food on Randolph.

Bonci? (Not a sit down place though...)

Go to lockdown and get the arson burger with the whole slice of habanero on it.

> I'm sure people in NY and LA do as well

In NYC we see this for pizza and ramen and maybe dim sum, but not burgers for whatever reason. If you look at the top 10 burger places in NYC, some are ridiculously crowded and some aren't, but the ones that are crowded (e.g. The NoMad bar) aren't crowded because of the burgers. They're probably at capacity during peak hours at night, but you don't see hour long lines at 10am on a weekday like you do with some other food types.

> To the commenters saying Stanich should simply raise its prices: there's a price ceiling for that burger. It's not a fancy chef burger; it's a standard burger shop burger executed well.

That's incorrect. Chef driven burgers are no different from the other burgers - the prices are raised until the price no longer can be raised. As long as Suzi from Chicago is willing to make a trip to Portland and she does not balk at $14 burger, the burger should go up from $13 to $14.

I don't think that's true, but it's being discussed ad nauseam upthread if you're interested.

It is discussed by people who believe the restaurant business is special, which is demonstrated time and time again not to be the case.

It is a standard supply and demand issue. It is studied ad nauseam in business schools. Raising prices is a standard way to drop the demand. It works for restaurants because they are one of the simplest businesses.

It's not complicated. The Stanich burger probably isn't even 50% better than locally available substitutes, let alone 500%. There's a bubble in interest in the restaurant due to the ranking. Most of the people willing to pay bubble premiums (in fact, probably all of them) have never used the product before, but have used substitutes. If you price to capture the premium from the bubble, you'll make more money in the short term, and alienate the customers that are going to keep you afloat after the bubble bursts.

> It definitely "ruins" the restaurant, in the sense that it becomes basically impossible to eat there anymore.

This just happened for me with a tiny little southern restaurant down the street from me. For about a year, I would go there occasionally and have a great meal with my SO. Never needed a reservation. Then it got a three star review from the new york times and it won the James Beard Best New Restaurant award, one of two won by the chef that night. I've basically written it off, as I'll never be able to compete with every seattlite and food tourist breaking down the doors to get in. It's sad for me, but I'm glad he's gotten the recognition he deserves.

Sounds exactly like the Country Cat in Portland.

> because Steve Stanich played ball with the review, like most restaurants would

Is he the person to understand what will happen? Or is it more the writer who would understand that?

Right now I would say that Bad Apple is about the best burger place. Kumas stretched themselves too thin with expansion and ignoring service quality in their original restaurant.

Bad Apple has been the best burger in Chicago for awhile. Amen.

tldr; Eternal September: Restaurant Edition

Or, How to DDOS a Restaurant

It's umami. Au cheval is overrated with the pretentious staff.

I'm not a fan of Small Chauval (too expensive for what you get), and I'm not going to wait 2-3hrs for a burger.

Honestly I'm not sure I'm sold on any destination burger. Google Kenji Alt's ultra-smash burger, and just make them at home.

I'm unhappy about Au Cheval because the rest of the menu is relevant to my interests, but I can't eat there because it's a destination burger restaurant now.

But, back to the point of this article: my problems != Hogsalt Restaurants problems!

Oh please, the Au Cheval wait has been ridiculous for at least 5 years now. If you have friends and you drink, it’s very easy to plan to hang at one of the bars that’re close by for a couple of hours.

I'm pretty sure that's the only reason that the Lonewolf exists. I've never heard of a time where you can get into Au Chavel without a wait for the time that I've lived here. (About 5+ish years)

If you're going to Au Cheval during the middle of the day, Lonewolf isn't an option. If you're going at peak hours, Lonewolf is likely to be as packeed as anywhere else. I like Lonewolf as much as anyone else does, but if I'm going to make a multi-hour project out of going to a restaurant, it's not going to be Au Cheval.

I have gone there when the place was half empty and told there would be a 20 minute wait, which turned into 40. The hostess told me I needed to download an app to check in for a table. I can go further but I am surprised that place is actually still in business, it has terrible customer service and mediocre over salted food.

Lone wolf is great, but sometimes haymarket has more space. If you go right when it opens at night, you can usually get in pretty quick (I’ve been seated in 15 minutes)

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