Eulalie

These Restaurants Have Ditched Reservation Apps | Eater NY

"When Tina Vaughn opened an intimate French American restaurant in Tribeca in 2023 that she runs with her husband, chef Chip Smith, she deliberately rejected reservation apps: she connected a landline, set up pencils in a glass, placed a reservation book beside a creased Rolodex, and answered calls to write reservations in neat script with personalized notes (for example: this customer takes Famous Grouse on the rocks; she likes mezcal in her margarita). Vaughn's voicemail — “This is Tina, of Tina and Chip, loving the fact that you are coming down to enjoy dinner with us… Leave me a message and I will call you back.” — signals the restaurant's insistence on human connection over automation, a throwback approach she says they've always used even at earlier places, and one that Pete Wells observed makes them seem like “members of an isolated religious sect.”" - Andrea Strong