Table for none! How NYC diners are forced to battle bots, apps and influencer hype at the city’s hardest-to-book restaurants

Source: New York Post

Securing a table at a top NYC restaurant has long required some planning and a great deal of patience. Lately, however, going out to dinner in the Big Apple has become a full-on competitive sport — call it the Hunger Games — complete with a list of unwritten rules and strategies for winning. Eager diners in the five boroughs and beyond have become accustomed to setting alarms for midnight reservation drops, they spend unhealthy amounts of time on Resy and OpenTable, hitting the refresh button, battling not just a bevy of bots unleashed online by shady third-party table brokers, but all-too-real influencers as well, not to mention the social-scrolling hordes who follow them from spot to spot.