Columbus restaurants fight the perception among diners that it's hard to get reservations

"You'll never get a table there," a server from Chapman's Eat Market heard an employee at a German Village retail shop tell a customer who was curious about the restaurant up the street.

It's a line Chapman's chef and owner BJ Lieberman has heard often himself, from people so certain they can't get a reservation at his global comfort-food restaurant that they haven't even tried.

It was difficult for a while after Chapman's was lauded by the New York Times as one of the country's 50 best restaurants of 2021 , he acknowledged, but reservations are fairly easy to come by now.

"We kind of dined off that for about two years," Lieberman said of the post-Times buzz. "We're not the restaurant that's impossible to get into anymore."

Truth is: No restaurant in Columbus is, no matter what you hear.

"Is it really possible to not get a reservation anywhere in Columbus? No," said Bethia Woolf, a local food writer and founder of Columbus Food Adventures, which hosts geography- and cuisine-centered tours of central Ohio restaurants. "But once that perception's out there, it's in people's heads."

A number of factors have made diners convinced that you have to wait a long time to get a table at some places in Columbus.

For starters, it used to be that way fairly recently. When Gov. Mike DeWine signed orders in May 2020 allowing Ohio restaurants to reopen after two months of shutdown at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic , social-distancing requirements and capacity limits made far fewer dining times available.

Restaurants' difficulties in restaffing limited hours of operation as well.

There are still fewer hours of operation, fewer tables and fewer staff working at The Refectory , a French and modern American restaurant on Columbus' Northwest Side. But on Monday, July 1, there were tables for two, four or six people available for most hours of its upcoming Friday and Saturday dinner services.

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"Oh my gosh, yes," owner Kamal Boulos said when asked if there's a perception that The Refectory is one of the city's impossible-to-get reservations. "All the time. I don't get it."

But he does, and not just for his restaurant, but all those fighting the same false impression. High-demand times, such as 7 p.m. on Friday or Saturday nights, are going to fill up sometimes a week or two in advance, Boulos said.

Woolf said she thinks Columbus diners have a smaller window of acceptable dining hours — she puts it at 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. — than people in cities, such as Chicago or New York, who are willing to eat later.

If reservations are fully booked at those peak times, both said, people think reservations are impossible.

When Boulos dines out, though, he said he prefers reservations early in the evening, when a restaurant is less crowded and the kitchen staff and servers are less rushed.

"If guests are more flexible ... then they'll be able to get a reservation," Boulos said. "If you want to come at 5 o'clock or 8 or 9 o'clock, there are plenty of restaurants you can get in easily."

On Open Table , the biggest online reservation platform, the 10 top-rated Columbus restaurants in the "fancy" category all had numerous same-day times available for two people on July 1. With 15-minute reservation intervals, there were 330 time slots at the 10 restaurants between 5 and 9 p.m. Only 15 were fully booked.

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When the server at Chapman's came into the restaurant and shared what she heard on her way to work, Lieberman said he invited a number of German Village business owners for dinner one night to tell them he'd appreciate their help fighting — or at least not perpetuating — the idea that his or any restaurant is impossible to get into.

He said he sometimes pulls out his phone when people tell him Chapman's never has reservations available. His demonstration usually results in one less open slot.

rvitale@dispatch.com

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus restaurants fight the perception among diners that it's hard to get reservations