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Many people find this odd, but I nearly always book before I set out for a restaurant. I hate the idea of arriving for dinner and discovering that there is no table or that I will have to wait for half an hour before they can accommodate me. Far better – and simpler – to call ahead and make a reservation.

Abroad, this practice would evoke no comment, but in India, people regard my insistence on reserving tables as strange or bizarre. Most Indians do not book before they set out for a restaurant. Often, they only decide where they’re going to eat when they’re already in the car or taxi. And if a restaurant is full, they are quite content to go somewhere else or to wait in the foyer.

Part of the problem is that we are only now developing a culture of food guides, so most people have no access to the telephone numbers of the restaurants they want to go to. So even if they think it is a good idea to book, they are still unable to do so in the absence of the phone number. It is also that most times – except perhaps on Saturday night or Sunday lunch – Indian restaurants are rarely full. So there’s no need to book weeks in advance as you would in London, Paris or New York for the top restaurants. If you were to walk into Bombay’s Zodiac Grill or Delhi’s Orient Express, the chances are that they would have a table for you.

Of course, there are exceptions. For part of last week, I was at the HT Summit at Delhi’s Maurya hotel. Each time I passed by the Bukhara restaurant, I noticed that not only was it full but there was always a small crowd hanging around in the passage that leads to the restaurant, waiting for tables to become vacant.

I can’t think of many other restaurants that are as packed as Bukhara. Wasabi at the Taj in Bombay can be difficult to get into – and even if you did, you would have to fight your way through a small army of ladies who lunch – but this may have something to do with its size: around fifty covers or so.

The one outlet in most hotels that tends to attract the most guests is usually the only one that does not accept reservations. Traditionally, coffee shops are meant to be the sort of place that guests can walk into on impulse. This means that you can never book a table. And yet, the coffee shops are the restaurants that fill up the quickest.

I spent much of my late adolescence in the lobby of the Oberoi Intercontinental (as it was then called) waiting for a table at Café Expresso (now deceased), the only hotel restaurant that I could afford when I wanted to impress a girl. When I was in Bombay, I would join the crowd in the lobby of the Taj, late at night (usually, just after the Blow Up disco had closed), waiting for a hostess from the Shamiana to come and tell us that our tables were ready.

In those days, the Shamiana queue was the stuff of legend. We would give our names to the hostess who would add them to a long list and say something like, “Would you like to wait in the lobby, sir?” before banishing us. No matter how long it took – and at peak times, people would wait for over an hour – we had no choice: the Shamiana was about the only restaurant open at that time of night.

Now, of course, there are many more hotels and many more coffee shops, so nothing really fills up the way it used to in the old days. I still remember the jam-packed midnight buffet at the Machan at Delhi’s Taj Mahal Hotel in the late Seventies. Because it was so cheap (my guess is that they would serve the food left over from banquets), all of Delhi would queue up at Man Singh Road, and the man at the next table was as likely to be a truck driver as a partying jet-setter. Eventually, the Taj tired of having to clean up after lorry drivers, who would throw chicken bones under the tables, and discontinued the buffet.

But how a restaurant handles being full tells you a great deal about the manner in which it is run. Take my local Sagar in Defence Colony. Despite its enormous size – many tables spread over many levels – it is always full. Frequently, you will see families waiting in Defence Colony market for a table at Sagar. But nobody is treated badly or made to wait for too long. They take your name down as you enter and the waiting time is rarely more than ten minutes.

Five star hotels do not cope as well. A colleague of mine went to a newly opened Oriental restaurant at a Delhi hotel. The restaurant was virtually empty when her party entered. But a hostess demanded nevertheless: “Do you have a reservation?” My colleague said she didn’t but wondered if this would be a problem. “Oh yes,” the hostess responded. “The restaurant is fully booked for later tonight.” She led my colleague to a small awkwardly placed table and insisted that it was the only one they had available in the empty restaurant. According to my colleague, even though more people did arrive in the course of the evening, the restaurant was nowhere near full by the time her meal was over. So why bother with the “we are fully booked” lie?

Worst of all are the trendy restaurants that throw attitude at guests when they are full. Many five star hotels make social decisions about who to find tables for – and rich people are always preferred to you and me – and have no hesitation in being rude to guests who do not look as though they are going to order bottles of champagne.

I expect that this is true of fancy restaurants all over the world. But there are trendy places that go out of their way to make every guest feel special. For instance, the hottest restaurant in London (in social rather than food terms) for the last two years has been The Wolsley (along with The Ivy).

But because the owners do not want the restaurant to be full of fat cats whose secretaries have found them tables weeks in advance, they have a policy of keeping something like fifteen to twenty per cent of all tables for walk-ins. This means that if you turn up at The Wolsley at lunchtime without a booking, there is a good chance that they will find a table for you.

I was sceptical when I read about the walk-in policy. But it’s true. I have gone to The Wolsley several times without a booking, and have always managed to find a table. No matter how many celebrities there are in the restaurant, they treat all guests like VIPs.

I can’t think of a single Indian restaurant I could say that about.

To be fair, restaurants abroad can also be celebrity-crazy, and I suspect that it is in the nature of all restaurateurs to suck up to rich people. In England, the Observer Food Monthly runs a regular feature where they call up restaurants and pretend to be celebrities. Most restaurants are revealed to be desperately eager to accommodate a famous person even when they claim to be full. And many will cope with the most outrageous requests – provided it is a celebrity who is doing the requesting.

In New York, the fancier restaurants have unlisted telephone numbers that they only give out to celebrities and rich people. Ordinary punters are put through the main switchboard and kept on hold forever, but favoured guests can get a table anytime they like by calling the special number. Some years ago, when Balthazar was the trendy restaurant of the day, The New York Times printed Balthazar’s unlisted number. The restaurant changed the number. The Times printed the new number. The restaurant’s owner, Keith McNally, then took calls from ordinary punters at this number, but told them that there was now a new number – and gave them the home number of The New York Times’ food critic.

I have to say that I was on the side of The Times, and when Balthazar’s switchboard crashed from the sheer volume of calls, I was delighted.

I don’t think that any Indian restaurant – not even Bukhara – is going to be as popular as Balthazar or The Wolsley in the near future. But I still think that it is a good idea to book ahead. It doesn’t do any harm. And at least you know where you’re going to eat before you get into the car.

Vir Sanghvi is Editorial Director of the Hindustan Times.

Courtesy Brunch

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