During my time as editor when The Good Food Guide was printed annually, there was one list on which I wish the book had featured: titles ‘most stolen from bookshops’. It seemed such an unequivocal endorsement. Similarly, you could consider a restaurant’s inclusion in a hard-to-book list an equally leftfield ambition – it speaks volumes of unwavering support.
But there’s a difference between perceived hard-to-book and actually hard. This is not about how to win the race to secure a seat at the hottest new opening. For that it’s best to wait. Our own GFG policy of waiting three months (at least) before reviewing a new restaurant usually gets us over that high demand hump. Though of course there are exceptions. One year on, Skof, The Good Food Guide’s current Best New Restaurant, continues to be very, very hard to book. At the time of writing, the only online option (until the end of August) was the waiting list, though you can call a reservation line. Plates, Kirk Haworth’s plant-based London restaurant was famously booked solid for six months when it opened in July last year and remains notoriously difficult to get into. My tip is to go as a solo diner – a seat at the chef’s counter is easier to come by. And even two years on, careful planning to score a table at a reasonably acceptable dining time is still required for London’s Bouchon Racine and The Devonshire.
There are others, years in, where reservations remain hard to come by – and not just that impossible one on a Friday or Saturday night. Twenty-six years after opening, a table at The Sportsman in Kent can still be a tough call. But with reservations taken old school over the phone, you can at least chat through your options. To bag a table at Core by Clare Smyth, you’re going to have to stalk the restaurant’s reservation system. After eight years, it’s still hugely popular. A mid-June check on OpenTable for July and August using the platform’s nifty ‘show next available’ tab, produced one 2.15pm lunch and just a few dinners, all at 9.45pm. Otherwise, be online at midnight 91 days in advance of your preferred date and time. But be quick. Most tables are snapped up as soon as booking opens.
And then there’s the curse of limited capacity and unique booking systems. Out on a relative limb in Shropshire, in the converted ground floor of Marc Wilkinson’s home, the Exceptional-rated Fraiche has space for just 12 diners and a waiting list that’s months long. Fill in an online ‘request reservation’ form – only a handful of dates were available pre-October on checking – and wait for an email confirmation. Similarly, fourteen-seater, Very Good-rated Condita is, according to our Edinburgh inspector, ‘a pain in the arse to book’. It’s another shot-in-the-dark email system, where you suggest a date and wait for a reply to discover if that works for the restaurant.
Is there such a thing as being next to impossible to book? Opened four years ago, Lichfield’s Upstairs by Tom Shepherd has always had the GFG team flummoxed. It’s seemingly impossible to book in advance – my own recent check showed the first available table was at the end of January 2026. However, you can put yourself on the waiting list for up to ten dates at a time and quite a lot of cancellations do come up. But if you’re not quick they get snapped up. For our latest visit we managed to book on a Thursday for lunch the next day only because the notification popped up on the phone while we were looking at it!
If only Riverine Rabbit were that easy. I consider myself a booking system veteran – even the Fat Duck’s in its heyday failed to defeat me – but I’ve now met my match. We were alerted to this 12-seater counter spot in Stirchley, Birmingham by one piece of reader feedback, liked what we saw on investigation and encouraged by the fact that it was fully booked for the next three months. But when lurking on the waiting list came to nothing, I started to set my alarm for midnight (once on three consecutive nights), to catch the daily drop for three months ahead. Each time, fingers faster than mine snapped up every slot in under a minute. It’s a booking system that repays with, well, it’s probably over-dramatic to call it rejection, but it’s definitely next to impossible.
