Introducing: What to Wear to Dinner at...

When restaurants become the runway

“I think restaurants have become too important.”

It’s a proclamation from the rom-com classic When Harry Met Sally. Harry’s best friend Jess and Sally’s best friend Marie have been brought along for an ill-fated dinner setup. Perched amidst white tablecloths and a polite crowd of New York diners, they fall for each other instead of their intended match.

"Oh, I agree," Marie responds. "Restaurants are to people in the '80s what theater was to people in the '60s. I read that in a magazine."

"I wrote that," Jess admits.

"Get out of here," Marie says.

"I did -- I wrote that."

"I don't think I've quoted anything from a magazine in my life. That's amazing. Don't you think that's amazing? And you wrote it?"

Jess marvels: "Nobody has ever quoted me back to me before."

And then they fall in love.

This exchange happened onscreen in 1989. It’s 2023, and Jess would still be right — restaurants are more important than ever. Getting a table at a popular eatery in New York has become akin to bloodsport. The winners of the scrimmage claim the ultimate trophy: a prime-time seat with clout in the sidecar, ripe and ready for Instagram.

There are tools for navigating the reservation hierarchy should you not be a Kardashian. Resy seems Democratic enough, but popular establishments often hold back their books, offering only off-hour tables on the app. The “notify” feature is helpful but far from a guarantee. And now that American Express owns Resy, cardholders gobble up priority reservations that Genpop never even sees.

Alternatively, Hot spots like Polo Bar release reservations with such precision that one must set an alarm to get in the queue. Many require you to ditch the app and get on the dreaded phone — a task often delegated to assistants and admins, who are being paid to sit on hold.

There’s Dorsia, a members-only app where diners pre-commit a minimum spend in exchange for a hot table, with restaurants like Torrisi charging $350 a head on weekend nights. ResX allows users to leverage unused last-minute dinner reservations by crowdsourcing in exchange for tokens. The more tokens a user gathers, the more premium reservation access becomes. Appointment Trader takes the Economics 101 approach: supply and demand. Hot tables can be bought and sold outright on an open market.

The interior at Torrisi.

Blackbird, an app from Eater and Resy co-founder Ben Leventhal, incentivizes return visits by tracking and rewarding regulars. “‘If two groups arrive at the restaurant and there’s only one table,” Mr. Leventhal told the New York Times, the restaurant will have the information it needs to determine who gets it: the tourist who may be a once-a-year visitor, or the regular who lives down the block.”

So you have the coveted reservation. Now, what are we wearing?

“Restaurants are the new runways,” declared writer Faran Krentcil in Elle magazine.

“It’s 9 o’clock on a Saturday,” Krentcil writes. “The regular crowd shuffles in. There’s a clique of editors swinging old Céline bags against their new Staud blazers and a group of TikTok aristocrats in pastel Diesel denim bralettes. Ella Emhoff and Rajni Jacques are around here somewhere, each wearing huge jean jackets that could swallow them whole. But this parade isn’t for a fashion week show or even the street-style Squid Game that happens outside. It’s just the dinner rush at a New York restaurant circa 2023, where it’s harder to get a table than a front-row seat.”

The article continues, “‘I think after a time of isolation, people really want to make a splash in real life, and not just on an Instagram grid,” says Kaitlin Prince, a managing partner at Jac's on Bond. The new downtown epicenter has only been open a week and already fed Brie Larson, Trevor Noah, and a stream of fashion émigrés fueling up on meatballs and wine before the Luar show. “A great restaurant or bar is a chosen community. It’s already curated—the design, the people, the vibe. People are using these venues as a way to reenter the world with intention and joy. And they’re really dressing the part.’”

Le Bilboquet Palm Beach.

I’ve been writing about restaurants for over ten years. I love to dine out. It’s a privileged skill to saddle up to the correct table at the right time, order well, and dress the part. And if you’re the type who cares about such things (me, maybe you too), I’m looking forward to introducing you to a new section of the newsletter I’ve thought about for a long time: What to Wear to Dinner at X. The X is, of course, an eatery of choice in New York and beyond. I’ve roped in some fantastic contributors from the food and fashion community to weigh in on the scene, the food, and what patrons are wearing at specific high-profile venues — plus make recommendations my own.

First round, we’ll run down the buzzy Sartiano’s, from Zero Bond owner and namesake Scott Sartiano, the over-the-top Le Bilboquet Palm Beach, the standpat Polo Bar New York, and Major Food Group’s showy Torrisi.

If you have dinner plans and are stumped on what to wear, drop a comment below or reply directly to this email (if you’re a subscriber) to make a request. And if you’re a fashion or food-adjacent writer and want to contribute, drop me a line at heyjg@jessgraves.com.