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What we actually do is this (probably more detail than you want, but transparency is important to me):

Single diners experience the menu in under 2.5 hours usually, whereas a table of 4 takes about 3:15 on average and a table of 6 just shy of 4 hours -- with some going well over. Why? Well we don't use heat lamps in the kitchen to hold food, we don't plate food if a diner is 'up' from the table, and of course with a table of 6 at any given moment someone is more likely to be outside smoking or using the restroom. We book 1 or 2 tables every 15 minutes between 5:30 and 7:30 at which time every seat is full. Given the time difference in party size, once we have the full template for the night, we can often place a single diner at a table on the early or late side knowing that having an 'extra' table or two works for the single diners.

BTW: we keep every 'ticket' from the expediters station in the kitchen, so we could tell you how long it took to serve your third course and how long you spent on the cell phone in the bathroom waiting area in 2006. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjoYQduECt0 Please watch this video... and yes that's our sous chef Rene from Next! Guy's a rock star chef, and worked nearly every position at Alinea from runner to expo to chef to learn the biz.

Again, at a restaurant that is not full every night there is no need to address these issues -- they can seat a single diner at any table, any time. We've thought long and hard about how to accommodate single diners -- and there is a long tradition of honoring the single diner at Michelin 3* restaurants (little secret: at the VERY high end places single diners get bumps) -- and this allows us the most flexibility in accommodating them without hurting the business of the restaurant and while accommodating the largest number of people we can to dine with us.

What we will do is gather up all of the single diner requests then see if we can slot them in. Keep in mind that for a given night we might get 10 or 20 such requests and only be able to accommodate 1 or 2.

We do in fact prioritize for: visiting chefs, visiting industry professionals, credible press (never anyone who asks for a comp in exchange for press), and regulars who have dined with us more than 25 times over the last 7 years. After that, it simply luck of the draw. Bourdain's wife would get in (she said we were the best dinner ever), Bourdain himself I'm not so sure.

Well, this is interesting:

It's official: Alinea, Eleven Madison Park swap restaurants for a week

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/ ... 7674.story

Some reservations are open right now for January. Just finished reading Life, on the Line, a great read, makes me want to go after one of these reservations.

I realize it's pricey, but is anyone else surprised by how many reservations are open for Alinea these days? I just checked their site and you can get most days over the next two months at not bad times on Wed/Thurs with a decent number of Fri/Saturday openings. Maybe I'm just used to Next selling out immediately, but there are lots of tables in March available. Kind of makes me want to go just because it's so much more available than Next. But $275 minimum after tax/tip with water pairings is still a big chunk of change.

You could eat at Next at least twice and some money leftover compared to the price of Alinea.

Do you think that Alinea's switch from a conventional reservation system to pre-paid ticketing is having any effect the perceived slow down there? Aand again, we're just guessing about a slow-down because we have no idea of what Alinea's numbers actually are. Still, I'm curious about the possible effect of that change on their business.

=R=

You're talking as a solo diner, right? Because even that would take some doing at Next.

Alinea wasn't that hard of a reservation to get, even before the ticketing system went into effect.

It wasn't hard to get the reservation they offered you, but it wasn't always easy to get the date you wanted.

Instead of calling on the 1st of the month at a specific time to try to get the date you want, would-be customers now have to obsessively check Twitter and Facebook. Or be savvy enough to know how to push SMS alerts to their phones via Twitter.

New batches of tickets are released at some point during the day around the first week or so each month.

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But kathryn, have you checked for availability recently? All that time-wasting on Twitter and Facebook, while necessary for Next, is no longer needed for Alinea. At least, not right now. I went into their website today to check availability of tickets for Alinea, and found that there were openings for seven of the next seven Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, and four of the next seven Fridays and Saturdays. If you have a specific time you'd like to dine and/or specific party size, you may not have all those times to choose from, but if you're a little flexible, you can still find a reservation to your liking. Without having to deal with an endless waiting list or wasting time checking when tickets are released.