Yes, Eater recently wrote an article about this very same subject. I’ve already written about eating at New York City’s Eleven Madison Park and Uchi without a reservation in June, therefore it is time to write about the reservation headache that is Lucia.
Eating at Lucia without a reservation has been a bother since moving to Dallas three years ago because their reservation system hurts my feelings. They seem to be the only place in Dallas making it hard to grab dinner on a whim. A whim dinner is what we all deserve as citizens of The United States of America.
Reservation nonsense shall become a part of the past since I do not have a job. It is very likely that waiting at the front door for one hour before opening is possible. Mom and I did it at Eleven Madison Park, so we have experience in looking pitiful while standing in front of a locked restaurant door.
There are bar seats open to losers who can’t get their act together and make a reservation on the day Lucia decides to grace customers with a reservation option by telephone—> one month in advance. Yuck. I called soon after moving here and it was almost as depressing as having beams of radiation burn my cervix five times a week for six weeks.
I get that some places are small. I get it. My guess is that part of the Lucia phenomenon is reverse psychology. People want what they can’t have. You can’t easily have Lucia, so come back and try again next month and then the next and the next and the next. Nobody likes this. Ah, but it works. Face it, food people in Dallas want to eat at Lucia and will continue to check Lucia’s facebook page for new dates to pathetically call for almost certain rejection or the dreaded busy signal. Who has a busy signal after 1994?
I mean, is the food really that good? Is there some kind of James Beard Award worthiness going on? In Houston we never, ever make a reservation. Brennan’s was the closest we ever came to reservation sadness in Houston. Even the smallest restaurants in Houston make it possible to eat in their restaurant if you really want to eat in their restaurant. They certainly don’t have a reservation system sending diners spiraling into the deepest of all dining depressions.
The bar is always the place to eat for several reasons. It is almost always a fact that a person will receive better service eating at the bar when a restaurant is super busy. How much easier is it to make a please-stop-being-weeded-and-help-me face when sitting at the bar and not trapped at a tiny two-top in the corner? Grabbing the bartender is going to happen faster. Trust me. I can walk into a restaurant and immediately know we will be miserable if we do not sit at the bar. It’s not all that hard to figure out when service is a priority. It’s always the bar that saves the day, except when there are only four seats at a particular bar. Yikes.
To get into Lucia, I am going to mix a few ideas one could use getting into Uchi and Eleven Madison Park without a reservation. The most important part of the plan is to wait in line when there isn’t a line. Form your own line and don’t worry about sweat pits. Wear something sleeveless and call it a day. Place a powder compact and lipstick in your purse if you’re a socialite with heightened beauty needs. This solves all sweating problems unless you are wearing non-aluminum Tom’s deodorant from Whole Foods because it doesn’t work for more than an hour sometimes.
My imagination thinks Lucia probably expects desperate, non-reservation people to stalk their four bar seats daily. Hopefully this doesn’t happen on Friday. Even though my husband said this is ridiculous and he will have no part in chair-racing, I will save him a chair anyway. With only four chairs, saving a chair will be like watching tumbleweed roll in a western shootout. Eating at Lucia without a reservation is going to happen because it’s all about having a plan.