What does restaurant "closing time" mean?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is really odd they allowed reservations if they were going to abruptly end service at 2pm. The wait staff should have at least given you a “last call” to give you an opportunity to order desserts or drinks before closing out.

Agreed. And I would expect a note to pop up on the reservation that the kitchen closes at 2 if I made a 1:30 reservation and that was the rule.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Last seating? Kitchen shuts down? Doors locked and lights out?

Had a 1:30 lunch reservation yesterday. When we arrived (5 minutes early), we were rather brusquely informed by the hostess that they'd be shutting down brunch service at 2 to prepare for the dinner shift. I was confused and asked whether they were going to honor our reservation or not; she said they were but wanted to make sure we were aware of the closing time. To be honest, I hadn't been aware they closed between brunch and dinner service, but it never occurred to me a fairly upscale restaurant would accept a reservation and then not be prepared to give the patron the full experience. We considered leaving because we while we weren't intending to linger over multiple courses, we weren't looking for a quick in/out either. But we decided to stay and our server greeted us and seemed friendly (or at least not annoyed that we were... dining under the reservation we made days ago). We ordered our drinks and meals and midway through eating (right around 2), she dropped off the check and informed us the kitchen just closed - no offer of coffee or dessert. We paid up and left (and tipped her 20% because the service was otherwise decent and I know she doesn't make the rules) but the whole thing was off-putting.

Many years ago I worked at a high end, non-chain steakhouse. If we closed at 10, anybody could walk in up to 9:59 and get seated and given the full experience. I thought that was normal, but maybe not?

Your high end steak house got away with making the kitchen staff work late. Now, either the kitchen closes or you pay more to keep them late, or your quality disappears as line cooks go to places where the hours are the hours or the pay is higher

I completely agree with you, however they should stop taking reservations past a certain time and say something like, "We close at 2 and don't seat anyone after 1."

[Anonymous]

(OP) They are no longer on Open Table so I had to call to make the reservation. I don't know if the person I spoke to on the phone was the hostess who was there when I arrived, but I wasn't told over the phone anything like "OK, you can come at 1:30 but the kitchen closes at 2" or "sorry, the latest we can accommodate you is 1 PM."