I have waited an hour on rare occasion. Usually its 20 minutes or less. (Of course, I often think that the hostesses are trained to say “about 20 minutes” regardless…)
Depends on many factors, and is governed by the time it will take to get to the second restaurant on our list. If it takes 20 minutes to go elsewhere, than a 20-minute wait is OK.
However, I wouldn’t wait more than half an hour.
About 20-30 minutes.
It depends on how hungry we are, how long the estimated wait is and how much we really want to eat there.
But then my friend and I go to some of the restaurants in the mall and there’s always another one just as good a little ways down (about 4 decent sit-down restaurants in the same mall, and at least two pubs within a block which is handy since we don’t drive).
I eat out by myself frequently, and hate being steered to eat at the bar simply because the restaurant does not want to devote a two-top to one person.
Not responsive to the OP, was I? 10-20 minutes. Denver has about a gazillion restaurants.
My wife and I won’t wait any minutes to get in. We drive to a place, and if the parking lot is full and it looks like a lot of people are inside, and especially if there is a lineup at the door, we keep going. There’s always another restaurant that we like, that won’t make us stand around waiting to spend our money there.
The longest I ever recall waiting for a table is 15 minutes with a reservation. I understand that reservations are not an exact science and that diners can linger unexpectedly. I’d rather wait a few minutes for a clean table than be rushed to one that hasn’t been given the proper attention.
Without a reservation, if I’m with people who feel strongly about eating at a particular place, I’ll wait up to 30 minutes.
I don’t eat in chain restaurants, so if I were somehow forced to go to one I’d wait about a minute and if they didn’t have a table I’d go on to the next one. I can’t tell the difference between the one vegetarian dish one of them has on the menu and the one vegetarian dish another of them has so I see no point in wasting time.
15 minutes. I’m going to wait at least as long to be served as seated and I take that into account. I’m there to eat, not chat. 15 minutes is probably the minimum they’ll tell you anyway, so I guess it’s not really worth my while asking how long the wait is if there is one. Anyway, chances are really good there’s another restaurant less than 15 minutes drive away without a wait.
Maybe 15 or 20 minutes, tops. If that’s what they tell us, and we decide to wait, and it’s getting longer than that, we’ll let them know to take our name off the list, and we leave.
We don’t mind being steered into the bar if there is one, since we usually plan on having a drink anyway. So we’re a little more flexible in these situations. But we won’t wait in the bar longer than it takes for one drink–we won’t have two or three drinks while we wait for a table.
A lineup is a dealbreaker. We won’t wait at all if we see one.
It’s pretty typical to have to wait at least 20 minutes for dinner pretty much everywhere here. I guess we just don’t have enough restaurants. Our favorite restaurant is Jack’s (kind of a hole in the wall bar that has the best steaks ever, it’s everybody’s favorite, though, and it’s tiny, and they do not take reservations). They typically have waits of anywhere from 15 minutes when it’s not busy (rare) or 30 minutes to an hour when it’s busy (typical), and the longest we’ve waited was 90 minutes. It’s worth it, though, the food is fantastic. There’s a nifty used bookstore across the street that we usually go browse after we put our names in. The worst, though, was Valentine’s Day three years ago. They start seating for dinner at 4:30. We got there at about 5 to put our names in…we were told it would be about 9 or 9:30. We decided to come back another night and went to Red Lobster instead, figuring all the nice restaurants would be nearly as bad as Jack’s…Red Lobster was a 90-minute wait. We did it, but now we have Valentine’s Day dinner at home (then go to Jack’s another night instead).
Definitely - if there are so many people that they’re spilling out into the parking lot, it’s time to move on.
I don’t recall ever being steered to the bar - do we look that much like non-drinkers??
Albany, surprisingly, has quite a few restaurants. 20 minutes or less is what we wait when it’s just the two of us, and no, we won’t go anywhere near the bar, we’re most likely not drinking alcohol anyway, thankyouverymuch. (We’renot teetotalers, just not interested in paying $5+ for something I can usually concoct at home.)
When we go to NYC there are a million restaurants but the people we go out with always wanna go eat Saturday night at the busiest time. :rolleyes: So we have to wait forever. And the people we eat with - they’re family, but they are not prompt, so first we have to wait for them, the n the restaurant. Drives me batty.
I’ll generally wait 30-45 minutes. Even if the only way to pass the time is stand around and talk to the people I’m with, that’s not too bad. Anything longer than that and I’ll start thinking about someplace else to go. When my wife and I make plans to go out, we usually decide on a specific restaurant in advance and sort of set our hearts on it-- it’s not like we just get in the car with no destination in mind. Maybe that’s why we’re more willing to wait.
Generally 30 minutes. It’s more of a guideline than a rule, though.
I am interested, htough, some people in this thread seem to be mad at the restaurant for being busy. Am I reading too much into the responses?
Yogi Berra allegendly said, “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”