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Comment by ehickox | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for calling out the restaurant issue in SF. Everyone seems to think it's normal and perfectly fine to wait 30+ minutes (My average is closer to 1.5 hrs at 'trendy' or 'gimmicky' places) for a table. Also the postage-stamp sized restaurants with like 4 tables. This is a uniquely SF setup for restaurants and it drives me nuts.

I generally love the taste and diversity of food in SF, but I feel like restaurant owners don't value their customers, nor their customer's time when they open a restaurant like this.

My new rule is: if the wait is 30 minutes or more, I go somewhere else. No exceptions. Honestly, I've fallen out of touch with many friends because of this rule, but my time is worth more than that. I actively try to patronize the "critically underrated" places that are good, but have no line down the block.

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> I generally love the taste and diversity of food in SF, but I feel like restaurant owners don't value their customers, nor their customer's time when they open a restaurant like this.

the only real solution for the "too popular" problem is to raise the prices, which might satisfy you but enrage others who are then priced out.

More optimistically, I believe the solution is for people to start seeking out the "critically underrated" ~3 star restaurants and start realizing that these supposed "trendy" places were never that great beyond their gimmick.

> More optimistically, I believe the solution is for people to start seeking out the "critically underrated" ~3 star restaurants and start realizing that these supposed "trendy" places were never that great beyond their gimmick.

Here's how that plays out: if enough people start to do that, someone will start a system for sharing information to support them, the discovered places will become trendy and either crowded or expensive, rinse, and repeat (actually, you are already in that cycle—that’s how lots of trendy places happen now.) As long as the Bay Area is awash in money, the same process driving real estate prices through the roof is going to do the same thing to dining prices wherever there is quality except where obscurity creates hidden bargains. But to exploit that you'll need to spend more time than you'd spend waiting in line at known places finding the hidden gems, and then finding new ones as other people discover the one you've found and the obscurity you've been exploiting is replaced with visibility and success.

> My new rule is: if the wait is 30 minutes or more, I go somewhere else. No exceptions.

Eh, that seems pretty generous to me still. I won't wait more than five minutes or so. (i.e. if a table has already asked for bills and I'm just waiting for them to pay and clear out.) I'll give a bit more leeway if there's a seated area where my friends and I can get served drinks while we wait.

The world needs more folks like you who are skilled in cost-benefit analysis.

> This is a uniquely SF setup for restaurants and it drives me nuts.

I waited in line in Paris at both Obermama (pizza & cocktails) and Kotteri Naritake (butter ramen with very few seats). I've been told to come back in an hour at a favorite spot (corsican food with very few seats).

It definitely happens elsewhere.

Fair enough. I'm sure it's happening in nearly all large metro areas in developed nations. I only said that because I hadn't noticed this trend (at least not to this extreme degree) in the course of visiting other large metro areas in the US.

It happens in smaller metro areas in the US; restaurants are notoriously marginal businesses in general, and the two basic success formulas for traditional full-service establishments seem to be “be completely full in a wide window around peak times—which tends to also mean have long waits at peak times” and “attract a very rich clientele and charge very high prices which don't require you to be constantly crowded to make a profit”.

There's also obviously the separate fast-food and fast-casual markets that focus on rapidly cycling customers with minimal delay and much lower service levels; they still try to be full as much as possible which still means queuing at peak times, but the queues tend to be shorter in time or just as deep (or deeper), and tend to involve actual physical, rather than merely logical, queues.

Japan has a long, long history of tiny restaurants and food carts. Most areas in Tokyo have many times more [0] restaurants than worldwide cities, just for this reason. There might be 20 small 8-seat ramen places in the same alleyway, whereas in other cities you'd have 2 or 3 larger restaurants spread out further.

[0] http://www.worldcitiescultureforum.com/data/number-of-restau...

> Everyone seems to think it's normal and perfectly fine to wait 30+ minutes

My New Yorker friends also think that queuing 30+ minutes for a trendy place is normal.

Yeah I'm sure this phenomenon is happening in other large metro areas. I'm sure it's just as bad in NY.

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