Are time limits at restaurants a reasonable new trend or inhospitable experience? | Column

I've encountered a dining trend that I understand but don't especially like. I found it three times, in different forms, on my recent trip to London. I hadn't thought about it again until I saw a tweet from Washington Post dining critic Tom Sietsema last weekend.

He wrote: "That 90-minute rule some restaurants have for diners? I hadn’t thought about it much until tonight, when three of us were mid-meal and asked to vacate the table. We were not lingering, btw. We were at the mercy of the kitchen."

Time restrictions at restaurants? Yes, they are a thing.

Before you even sit down, you're told how long you'll have at your table. This started as a response to the return to dining during the COVID-19 pandemic. There could be only so many diners in a room, so time restrictions made sense.

Most expect that normalcy has returned to restaurants. But these timed diners make sense to busy, popular restaurants in big cities such as London and Washington, D.C. Seats are in demand. Give people 90 minutes or two hours to eat and then they have to get out. The next party enters.

It may well make business sense. But it doesn't necessarily feel good.

When I reserved a lunch at Jacuzzi in the Kensington section of London, the rules were clear. (By the way, lunch was all that was open three weeks before my London arrival.) It was right there on the confirmation that my lunch was set for 14:15 to 16:15. We drank, ate and left before our time was up. It was just fine.

When we stopped at a largely empty Southwark restaurant after an afternoon at the Tate Modern museum, we were told we could have a table for one hour. No more. We had no reservations, were hungry, and 22,000 cyclists were finishing a race in the neighborhood. They all had reservations in an hour. So we were grateful to eat, time limit or not. There was no problem as they served us quickly.

But it was at a restaurant in our hotel that I encountered the unexpected time limit. I had booked dinner at 5:45 p.m. on our first night. I knew from experience that arriving at 6 a.m. that day dictated an early dinner. My husband and I invited a London friend to join us. The three of us had drinks and dinner. But instead of offering us dessert, they told us it was time to leave the table. The next party was waiting. I get it. But I didn't like it. I wasn't warned when making the reservation. I wasn't warned when we sat. But we left as requested.

The Washington Post critic's experience was much worse. His party was still eating when he was de-tabled. That's bad.

I think that knowing the rules before you start makes a difference, as does the explanation. When the restaurant is tiny, getting diners in and out is the only way the business can survive.

That explains the one-hour reservation time limit at Providence, Rhode Island's Little Sister. Owner Milena Pagán was one of this year's James Beard Foundation's semi-finalists for Best Chef: Northeast. When you reserve your table online, it says right there that because there are only six tables, all seatings are for one hour. We can all be sympathetic to the challenges there, right?

Do we have to be similarly understanding of big, corporate restaurants? I'm just not sure.

There's also a time limit on the lawn at Castle Hill Inn in Newport, Rhode Island. In summer, the prized Adirondack chairs facing Narragansett Bay have always been first come, first served. They just launched reserved lawn seating, in 2.5-hour seatings, for parties of six to 12 chairs. There's a charge of $25 per person, plus tax and 20% gratuity. That doesn't include food and drink. If you don't like it, you don't have to do it.

I guess that at the heart of it, time restrictions just don't seem very hospitable. I'm not sure how good that is for the service industry.

On the other hand, we've seen a movement of people abusing their restaurant time. A restaurant table isn't your own personal dining room. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay there all night either.

Maybe more consideration of others on both sides would be a step in the right direction.