Banquettes, booths and fleeting luxuries
My favorite way to dine
There are almost no bad seats at Bridges. Walk into this French spot off Bowery and you are greeted by a cherry wood bar, chrome lights and two booths with black leather cushions. I’ve had wonderful meals in this front area as a walk-in. But the real magic happens beyond the glass-block partitions.
The 50-seat dining room is mostly made up of sectioned banquettes. There are sometimes free standing tables in the middle of the space. If seated there, I’d have to assume someone in my party was a notoriously horrid tipper. An otherwise great meal can be ruined by poor company and poor service, but seating is an underrated variable. Stick me at your restaurant’s worst table and I’ll probably leave with a worse impression of the food. Give me the big ass booth and I’m more likely to walk away elated. It’s irrational, and it’s real.
A couple weeks ago, I settled into a cozy corner of one of Bridges’ rounded banquettes. I maintain that the food here is stellar. But the room certainly helps. It’s a scene that facilitates seeing and being seen. When you have friends on one end of the restaurant or there’s a celebrity in another, you notice right away. An extra foot of buffer allows for intimacy at your table, and the open floor plan fosters intimacy among other diners. You see people swinging by the kitchen to say hi to chef Sam Lawrence or pop in and out of the PDR. And then you see them saunter back to their lovely, lounge-worthy seats ready to drink wine and crush vin jaune gelato for hours.
It’s a rare approach for a new restaurant. Penny is one long counter. Eel Bar has some booths and banquettes, but they’re compact and don’t encompass the full space. Bernee, the new spot from the All Time crew in Altadena temporarily closed following the LA fires, has one glamorous nook in the back. It looks out at a dining room otherwise occupied by bar stools, counters and regular tables. If you’ve ever snagged one of the church pew booths at Sam’s Place in Highland Park, let me know who you paid off.
There’s an economic reality here. Maximizing impossible margins is essential at restaurants. Luxurious booths and banquettes eat away at precious opportunities to better profit off each turn. Diners also have indicated they won’t always reward the investment. Bar Contra works because you can pop in for drinks and dessert after a dinner date then pop out an hour later. You can also linger in their booths if you want. That flexibility is what a lot of New Yorkers are looking for. It’s a fine line to walk — providing the right comforts and managing a palatable per check average.
If you try to book Torrisi on Resy today, you’ll mostly come up empty. There are a few dining room four-tops at 11pm on a Monday or Wednesday. If you wait and look day-of, you can probably snag a 5pm in the bar area. Head over to Dorsia and the disparity becomes more clear. For a $250 per person minimum spend, a spot at the bar is yours. Bump that up to $300 per person and they’ll move you to a real table.
What you see online doesn’t begin to capture the fortress of gatekeeping going on inside of this (delicious, incredible, must-visit) restaurant. The seating hierarchy is obvious because Torrisi makes it obvious to you.
There’s a standing bar right next to the kitchen. You can sweet talk your way into drinks and dessert here and have one of the best nightcaps in the city. I’ve also seen dudes stuck here with deeply annoyed dates who got dressed up for Torrisi and can’t help but show glaring disdain for being relegated to the plebeian counter. (I don’t think they got lucky).
There’s the actual bar, which is solid.
Next to the bar and near the door there are about five two-tops. This is where Torrisi wants to seat you if they don’t know you. The food hits just as much, but the experience does not.
Walk past the standing bar and there’s a single banquette with a few tables. These are good for lunch.
Keep going and now you’re in the dining room, where you could grab a six-top for an $1,800 minimum spend. Fun. What won’t be clarified on Dorsia when you book is if you’re getting a free standing table or a booth.
And lemme tell you, you want a booth. I’ve dined via every type of seating option here. I’ve sat in a booth once — four people at 11:15pm enjoying a late dinner after a party. We booked the table 30 minutes before arriving. It felt special. The food tasted better. I ordered more cocktails than normal, plus every dessert on the menu. Some restaurants bypass banquettes and booths because it’s the only way they’ll make money. Others just withhold, seeing the value in gatekeeping. Not every place can pull this off. It would be annoying if more spots started to Mario World their dining rooms. But then, sometimes, you get shuffled behind the velvet ropes and it’s worth it.
I believe that you don’t ask for the best tables at restaurants, you earn them. Tip well, get to know the staff, show up regularly, call ahead for friends and send them a bottle of wine. These are easy ways in if this kind of thing matters to you. Getting the best table everywhere is overrated. Getting the best table at a couple spots you love is actually pretty cool.
My favorite table in New York is in Rockefeller Center. I don’t request it ahead of time, but by luck or favorable Resy status, I usually end up there. The host at Le Rock moves through the dining room to the very back corner of the restaurant, where two banquettes converge into a corner. Both diners can see out into the rest of the crowd, sensing the energy, but feeling like the only two people around. It’s a great table at 5pm and a perfect table at 9pm when the lights start to dim. I’ve pregamed the ballet here, toasted to birthdays, caught up with old friends, and accidentally celebrated an anniversary with
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A restaurant can just be about the food. A meal can also be about the scene or the company or the wine or the conversation. A memorable dinner can happen at the bar or a table by the door or hunched over a counter. But there’s a special kind of restaurant-only spell that occurs in these spacious booths and banquettes. They happen at Gage & Tollner and Dame, Frenchette and Horses. And for me they happen most often at Le Rock. I remember the razor clams and the scallops. The hand cut fries and the bison au poivre. The profiteroles and the sirocco. The jokes and the stories. And I remember enjoying it all from the best seat in the house.
Love
Thank you 💕🙏🏽