A question for people who have worked in higher end restaurants. [View all]

[912gdm]

I figure this isn't something for GD, and probably not lounge, but I didn't know where to ask this.

I live in South Indiana, so not the Mecca of food and fashion like NYC, however at a near-by casino there is a nicer restaurant that I tried to take my parents to last night.

It was 7pm, they opened at 5, and the place was completely empty on a Friday night. I went up and asked for a table and the hostess asked if we had a res, I said no, she said she could seat us at 8pm. We decided not to wait and went elsewhere.



I guess the reason I am posting this is if there are people with restaurant exp who could answer some questions for me, since I was stunned and didn't think to ask the hostess. If the place if empty, and has been open for two hours <staff, cooks, etc> why would they turn away a walk up? There was no line for people to get their 8pm res, so its not like we were going to take a table.

If they had planned for a 7pm rush, why put us at just an hour wait, when the 7 people would still be at those tables at 8?

We were overthinking this as he drove to another place to eat, but we wondered if it was because my dad was wearing blue jeans and a sweater. Mom seemed pretty hurt also saying she thought her LLBean clothes were ok... All and all, it was a pretty weird experience