20 Wild Ways People Booked Restaurant Tables Before Apps

You may recognize the name Duncan Hines as the brand of cake mix on the shelf. What’s less well known is that Duncan Hines was actually a Kentucky traveling salesman who had become a restaurant critic. He self-published a book of recommendations in 1936 called Adventures in Good Eating. It included listings for the restaurants, their telephone numbers, and comments about the places’ cleanliness, so that customers could call ahead before they made the trip. The book was as ubiquitous in drivers’ glove compartments as road maps. It wasn’t until 1952 that the Hines name appeared on boxes of cake mix.

At fine restaurants in 1930s-50s New York and Los Angeles, the maître d’ decided when people were seated. A folded bill handed over with a handshake could move the line along. Two to five bucks was common. 20, which was worth more than $250 today, was an extravagance. Memoirist and ex-headwaiter Michael Cecchi-Azzolina writes that honest maître d’s often refused tips on really busy nights, when they had no tables left to offer. Cash only gave you a chance, never a guarantee.

A columnist like Walter Winchell, the syndicated New York gossip columnist, had so much sway over a nightspot’s fortunes that he could usually manage to seat a favored contact on a given night. When the Stork Club, a famous New York nightspot, was sold out, a patron, an actor, or a press agent with access to Winchell would phone him up, and he would call the headwaiter directly to trade the favor for coverage. Hedda Hopper, the Hollywood gossip columnist, was his counterpart. The word of a columnist was worth more than any line outside a door.

During the Gilded Age, New York, London, and Paris diners presented the host or page boy at the door with a calling card, engraved with their name and title. This was how the British restaurant critic Lt.-Col. Nathaniel Newnham-Davis described it in Dinners and Diners (1899). A known name on the card was sufficient to take you past any unknown walk-ins and right to the head table.

Following Prohibition, some of the fancier supper clubs turned into “key clubs,” at least in part because of municipal ordinances prohibiting the serving of alcohol to anyone not carrying a club key. In fact, for years, you could not be admitted to a supper club unless you showed a membership card to the doorman, or if you were truly fortunate, actually carried the brass door key itself. Card-holders didn’t wait in line. No card or key meant no entry, even when several tables were empty.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, telephone service began to spread to urban areas. Rather than visiting in person or leaving a reservation card, customers called the restaurant and spoke to the maître d’ or head waiter, who would then log their request in a paper book.

On the front podium at a restaurant sat a big leather-bound volume called “the Black Book.” Reservation history was recorded within it in handwritten script, from as early as the 1800s up until the late 1900s. Servers paged through it while customers waited nearby. If you stood close enough to the podium, you might be able to take advantage of a freshly canceled slot and grab the last-minute reservation.

A person who dined at a very fashionable restaurant between the 1920s and 1950s had an option if the place was full: mention the name of a personage whose presence was known and respected by the proprietor. This strategy was sometimes effective, writes the food writer M.F.K. Fisher in An Alphabet for Gourmets, published in 1949, noting that the headwaiter would usually play along.

For many decades, the American telegraph company Western Union offered long-distance travelers a way to reserve a table without a phone call. People could wire ahead a short message, charged per word, to a restaurant in a city they had not yet arrived in. Between the 1890s and 1940s, they would send their party’s number and estimated date of arrival a few days early, as long-distance phone calls were sometimes prohibitively expensive or not an option. In 1929, at its peak, Western Union sent out around 200 million messages. Some of those were dinner reservations.

As soon as Prohibition was repealed in 1933, restaurants started filling the room. Instead of turning people away, they’d seat them at the bar. The guest handed the host their last name, ordered a drink, and waited. When there was a table ready, the host or a busboy would call out their name throughout the restaurant. There were no buzzers and no pagers. It was the host’s or busboy’s memory and a loud voice.

Reservations were not taken at most of the celebrated lunch counters and seafood houses of the early and mid-20th century, not even by friends of the proprietors. Patrons lined up outside waiting for the places to open. In other places, as M.F.K. Fisher noted, you called ahead only to spare yourself the “ignominious” prospect of being in line like this. On the sidewalk was the way.

A page boy at a Gilded Age hotel was a young man wearing livery who worked to deliver messages and run errands for and among a hotel’s guests and employees. In the 1880s through 1910s, a guest could send one out into the city with a handwritten reservation request. The headwaiter would write out a confirmation, and the boy or courier would take that note back.

Before telephones were available in most homes, hosting a big family dinner or holiday banquet in 19th- and early-20th-century North America and Europe meant doing it the old-fashioned way: by mail. The host would write to the restaurant owner to state the number of guests, date, and menu choices, and would send the letter off weeks in advance. The owner would confirm the reservation by mail. This was never a same-day affair. It was the only way to secure a large table well in advance.

Until the late 1950s, a busy businessman or hotel guest rarely made dinner reservations by telephone; their concierge or secretary did it for them. That person probably had a standing relationship, perhaps even credit, with the headwaiter of a restaurant. And that connection might secure a table that no one calling in from the street could hope for.

Prior to 1960, the doorman or maître d’ enforced a dress code right at the door, before you were even seated in the dining room of a fine restaurant. The men wore a dinner jacket, dark suit, and tie. The women wore an evening gown and gloves. This wasn’t considered a fashion statement. It was what you did. Even if the place was empty, you wouldn’t be allowed to eat if you weren’t wearing the correct attire.

Food historian Jan Whitaker points out that frequent diners in the industrial era generally paid for their meals in bulk instead of buying them one at a time. From the 1880s through the 1930s, these regulars would purchase books of printed “Meal Tickets,” or, in some cases, cardboard punch cards, typically containing 21 tickets. Presenting their ticket stub at the counter showed that they had prepaid and secured a place in line during rush hour.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many restaurants and taverns offered table d’hôte, “the host’s table” in French, a meal provided for a fixed price at a specified time every day. A city dweller, bachelor, or hotel guest could purchase a reserved seat at a certain table on a daily or weekly basis and be served a certain number of courses per meal, without needing to book a place for dinner each night.

A full meal takes time, and so 1930s-1950s-era hosts who were holding dinner parties would telephone the head waiter several hours or days ahead to agree on appetizers, mains, and wines to be served. This, writes M.F.K. Fisher, avoided “the confusion that inevitably follows the first showing of menu cards.” That way, the kitchen could begin preparing food right away when guests arrived.

In the days before the advent of the charge card, some hosts felt it was bad manners to discuss finances at the table, or to settle the tab with currency. Between the 1920s and 1950s, favored or regular diners were able to arrange to have the check sent to their house or workplace. M.F.K. Fisher wrote that this custom was a way to keep money out of the meal.

The cabinet particulier was a private dining room that could be found on the second story of fancy restaurants in Paris, London, and New York. People could use them instead of eating at a communal table in the main dining room. From 1850 to 1910, cabinets had door locks, comfortable chairs, and a bell on the wall that summoned a waiter. Politicians and businessmen used them for business deals, while couples went there to be alone on a date.

This content was created with the help of AI.