A Hot Reservation Tip and a Baseball Birthday Party
There's a Raya for dinner reservations and we need to talk about it
A few weeks ago, a former manager of mine wrote to me asking if I had ever heard of Dorsia. The answer was no, but after a brief introduction into the gist of their operation, I felt compelled to take a closer look. Thanks Meg :)
Dorsia, or Dorsia Members Club, is an app with six whole reviews on the App store, yet they boast 66,000 Instagram followers. Their one-line bio is “Your access to impossible reservations and curated experiences” which, to me, sounds a bit like a 27 year old decided to make high-end restaurants feel like a space that only few can afford access to. An exclusivity to remind us that not everyone can participate in the more lux experiences in the world’s most expensive cities.
Dorsia’s mission statement is as follows:
With Dorsia, your name is always on the list. Impossible experiences are no longer reserved for special occasions. The most desirable tables, cultural events, and experiences are at your fingertips. From big cities to seasonal islands, with Dorsia in your pocket, you can touch down anywhere and immediately tap in.
Dorsia handles the details so you can focus on enjoying the experience without any friction. No more endless scrolling, our experts do the curating for you. Your profile, card, spend, and preferences are always on file resulting in elevated service every time. No lines, no third parties, no checks.
Now Serving: New York, The Hamptons, Miami, Orlando, Boston, Martha’s Vineyard, Los Angeles, San Francisco, California Wine Country, London, Ibiza, Saint-Tropez, Cannes, Monaco, Amalfi Coast, Provence, Mallorca, Dubai…and more destinations coming soon.
In essence, Dorsia is somewhere between Raya and Resy—an overlap that I, personally, don’t think necessarily needed to happen. A membership application needs to be submitted, with preference given to referrals. Surprisingly, Dorsia operates without initiation fees at the moment, but the platform is by no means inexpensive. Once you’re in, the idea is that Dorsia is matching you to high-end restaurants, and providing all of your information so that you don’t need to make reservations, pay bills, or wait in lines.
Members establish a “minimum spend” at a table or book a reservation at a fixed pre-paid rate. Dorsia explains the minimum spend as, “calculated from a supply-and-demand pricing model, similar to what’s used in the travel industry, factoring in urgency, timing, availability, and high-demand periods.” This could be $500/person for a table for two at Carbone. First of all, who is falling for that. Second of all, does that not sound like they are removing all human interaction from going out to eat and calling it luxury? Part of the appeal of dining out is the ability to meet a carefully trained staff and benefit from their care—what would restaurants be without a front of house to elevate and enhance your experience?
I went through the motions of applying for a membership because, I had to know. The app asked me to input my birthday with a cheeky helvetica subfont that read “forever young.” Give me a breaaakk. They asked what company I worked for, my job title, my Instagram handle and my LinkedIn. I typed in random letters for my handles, and I misspelled my email. The app didn’t pick up any of those errors and sent my application on its merry way. Good luck finding me, guys!
Scrolling through the App store I noticed other apps highlighting similar services, ResX, TableOne, Appointment Trader (not an app, just a weird secondhand marketplace for reservations), all of which are different interfaces with a similar promise—for a certain fee, you, too, can eat at Torrisi. While I can’t say I am much of a trend reporter, I do think this is indicative of a larger shift in the hospitality world, especially in major cities where restaurants can get away with dress codes and $30 martinis.
Post-Covid New York has seen the food scene completely erupt and, with it, a slew of residents and tourists alike eager to take advantage of all the city has to offer and stay on top of the newest openings and latest hits. In a lot of ways, that eagerness to always be going out and visiting the hottest spots comes from the ability to say you’ve been—to be one of the few that grabbed a coveted reservation at an exclusive spot and were able to enjoy the food they provide. Not everyone can get a table wherever they desire, so a sense of accomplishment is allocated to those who do. Dorsia, and other reservation assistants, are profiting off of that desire. I am particularly confused though, by their list of partnering restaurants. Why pay extra for Ai Fiori, Altro Paradiso, Corner Bar, and Soothr when you could just… go? Some of these spots are not that hard to get into, and others just aren’t that great. It is clear I am not Dorsia’s target audience, but I do question how effective this platform is, how they’re gaining traction, and what’s in it for their partners.
I love Resy as much as the next girl but I do wish we could go back to calling in for a table and being able to eat where you want, when you want. I don’t know how the food scene became so inaccessible, and why everyone has gotten so obsessed with the prospect of making a hamburger impossibly difficult to acquire.
Adam Iscoe wrote about the difficulty of getting reservations in April for The New Yorker, and it is worth reading. Would really love to hear other’s thoughts on this…
In other news, I have been home for the last week and have been doing a lot of cooking—as usual. My dad’s 59th birthday was yesterday so we threw him a 10-year-old-baseball-themed party complete with banners, balloons, and a baseball diamond cake. We wanted to emulate a slightly elevated ballpark snack spread so the menu ranged from oysters and shrimp cocktail to cheeseburgers and a baked potato bar. I filled a cooler with Budweisers and Narragansetts and everyone ate off of plastic plates. It was a good time. Pictures of the party spread and some other meals from my week of incessant tomato eating below.
I need to return to New York because my want to go list is getting crazy. I need to go to Bar Contra in it’s new form and I am counting down the days until Elbow opens. Plus Son del North looks worthy of the praise but there is only one way to find out…
crazy crazy crazyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy fomo omg
keep tech out of hospitality