How to get a table at a fully booked restaurant

Find out when the restaurant releases its tables and be ready at that hour. If you have missed it, join the waitlist, try lunch or the early or late sitting, or turn up when the doors open for a seat at the bar or the counter. Then phone, between services, with your dates and how flexible you can be. Those moves, in that order, work in London, Lisbon or Lyon, and none of them means paying a resale site. If they all fail, book somewhere else and enjoy it.

Find out when bookings open

A restaurant that shows nothing for your dates may simply not have opened them yet. Each one sets its own schedule:

• A rolling window: tables open a set number of days ahead, a new day each morning or each midnight.
• A release date: a whole month goes on sale on a fixed day, at a fixed hour.
• By phone or email only, or a mix, with some tables online and some kept back.

The restaurant’s own website usually says which, on its booking page or in its questions and answers; a newsletter or its social accounts announce release dates. Once you know, be ready:

1. Set up an account on its booking system and save your details before the day.
2. Set an alarm for the release time in the restaurant’s time zone. Lisbon keeps UK time; Paris and most of western Europe are an hour ahead.
3. Have two or three acceptable times in mind and take the first one that comes up.
4. Book the table first and the trip around it. In planning a food trip, this is the anchor meal that every other square is fitted round.

Join the waitlist and watch for cancellations

If the release has passed, the next move is the waitlist. Most booking systems have one, under one name or another: a waitlist, an alert, or Notify on Resy. You usually give your date and a range of times, and the system tells you when a table that fits comes free.

• Widen the range. 18:00 to 22:00 catches far more than 20:00 exactly.
• Treat an alert as a chance, not a booking. Open it and book at once: you are rarely the only one on the list.
• Look yourself, too. Cancelled tables come back on to the booking page at any time, often around the restaurant’s cancellation deadline, when people whose plans have changed give their tables back before a charge applies. Check then, and again on the morning of the day.
• Join the restaurant’s own list if it keeps one by phone or email, as well as the system’s.

Change the time, the day or the meal

Most fully booked restaurants are fully booked at the times everyone wants. Move away from those.

• Lunch instead of dinner. Lunch often fills less quickly, and some restaurants serve a shorter menu at midday.
• The early or the late sitting. The first table of the evening and the last are the ones most people pass over. In a city that dines late, shift both ends to fit.
• A weekday. Tuesday to Thursday instead of Friday or Saturday.
• Fewer people. A table for two comes free more often than a table for six, and one person can often sit at the counter.

Walk in: the counter, the bar and the queue

Many restaurants keep the bar, the counter or a few tables for people who turn up, and the website often says so. Walk-in seats go first, so arrive as the doors open, or try late, when the first sitting leaves. Go as two, or alone, and if there is a list, leave your name and a phone number and wait at a bar nearby.

Some places take no bookings at all: the neighbourhood tasca with its dish of the day, the tapas bar, the counter where the cooks serve you across the pass. There the queue is the booking. Find out when they open, be there before the doors do, and accept the wait as part of the meal. Our guide to where to eat in Lisbon marks which places take walk-ins only and which need a booking.

Tip: At a walk-in-only place, the minutes just after the doors open are the easiest time to be seated. Arrive hungry and early, rather than at the hour everyone else eats.

Phone or email, and make it easy to say yes

A call reaches the person who knows what the booking page doesn’t: who has cancelled, whether the bar is free, whether a table could be squeezed in at 22:00. Some restaurants keep a few tables off the online system altogether.

1. Call between services, in the middle of the afternoon, not at 13:00 or 20:00 when the phone is a nuisance.
2. Say what you need in one breath: the date, the number of people and the range of times you would take.
3. Offer the easy yes: the bar, the counter, the early table or the late one.
4. Leave a number and ask to be put on the cancellation list.
5. Abroad, email if the language is a barrier, and keep it short. A first line in the local language is a courtesy.

If there is an occasion, say so, but only if it is true.

Deposits, card details and no-show fees

Restaurants that sell out often ask for something to hold the table, because a table emptied at the last minute is hard to fill. Read the terms before you confirm: how late you can cancel without a charge, and how much the charge is.

What they ask for	What it means	If you cancel late or don’t turn up
Card details	The card is held against a fee	The fee in the terms may be charged
A deposit	Part of the bill paid up front	They may keep some or all of it
Prepayment	The meal paid in full when you book	Check the terms: some let you move the date or pass the booking on

Whether a fee is actually charged is often the restaurant’s call, so if you are running late or can’t come, phone. Cancel as soon as you know, too, because your table is someone else’s waitlist alert.

In the UK, Citizens Advice says restaurant bookings for specific dates have no cooling-off period, that a business can hold some or all of a deposit to compensate for its financial loss, and that you should negotiate if a cancellation charge seems unfair. The Competition and Markets Authority’s consumer guide adds that a charge is not fair just because it is in the contract: it must be a genuine estimate of the business’s direct loss. Abroad, the rules are the country’s, so the terms you agreed to are your guide.

What not to do

• Don’t buy a booking from a resale site or a stranger. A booking bought from someone else is in their name and can be refused at the door, and some restaurants’ terms forbid passing bookings on.
• Don’t hold several tables for one night and drop the spares at the last minute. It blocks other people, and it may cost you the fees.
• Don’t book for two and arrive as four, or book for four and arrive as two.
• Don’t use bots or scripts to grab tables on release.
• Don’t arrive late without calling. A table held for you is a table someone else could have had.

When to give up and book elsewhere

Give the chase a deadline. If the release, the waitlist, a call and a walk-in attempt haven’t produced a table by the week before, stop and book somewhere else. One restaurant shouldn’t cost you the trip, and in most cities the place everyone is chasing is not the only good table in its street.

• The same kitchen, another room: the restaurant’s bar, its wine bar or its sister place, if it has one.
• The same neighbourhood: a counter or a tasca a street away that takes walk-ins.
• Another day of the trip, with the anchor meal moved to fit.

Each City Tables edition lists the tables that fill up, how far ahead to book each one and how, so the hard bookings are known before the trip starts. For more on eating well wherever you are, see Eat & Drink.