10 people. 4:00p.m. Loop or River North

Apologies in advance for this CHish request. I thought it would be easy to find a place for 10 people to have an inexpensive early supper this Friday before our out-of-town guest has to leave for the airport. Open Table give me very little to choose from at 4:00, and it's mostly steakhouses and Rosebud spin-offs. We'd like to a) spend less than the steak houses and b) have better food than we can get at Rosebud. It would also be nice if it were quiet enough to actually hear ourselves talk.

Ideas, anyone? And why is this so hard? Why do places like Quartino say they can give me a reservation at 3:30 or 5, but not at 4:

Ann Fisher wrote:Apologies in advance for this CHish request. I thought it would be easy to find a place for 10 people to have an inexpensive early supper this Friday before our out-of-town guest has to leave for the airport. Open Table give me very little to choose from at 4:00, and it's mostly steakhouses and Rosebud spin-offs. We'd like to a) spend less than the steak houses and b) have better food than we can get at Rosebud. It would also be nice if it were quiet enough to actually hear ourselves talk.

Ideas, anyone? And why is this so hard? Why do places like Quartino say they can give me a reservation at 3:30 or 5, but not at 4:

I'd recommend calling the restaurant directly. They may well be able to accommodate you, even if Open Table doesn't show availability.

Bin 36 was the first place the came to mind, although I'm not sure how if that price point works for you.

The GP wrote:I'd recommend calling the restaurant directly. They may well be able to accommodate you, even if Open Table doesn't show availability.

Thank you! I should have thought of that. Quartino had no problem giving me a reservation when I called.

Ann Fisher wrote:Ideas, anyone? And why is this so hard? Why do places like Quartino say they can give me a reservation at 3:30 or 5, but not at 4:

Opentable works based on whatever information the restaurant feeds into it. Quartino's listing on Opentable says that they are open till 2 pm for lunch, dinner starts at 5 pm, and "bar hours" start at 3 pm. So Opentable's computer algorithm apparently blocks out 4:00 as a time when reservations can't be made. Perhaps that was the case when Quartino first set up their Opentable listing, or perhaps an error was made at that time.

OTOH the hours shown on Quartino's website say that they're open all afternoon long.

Discrepancies like this are one of several reasons why you can sometimes get a reservation over the phone when Opentable shows no availability. (Another is that restaurants sometimes hold some seating back from Opentable, to use at their discretion.)

There are also some places who don't like to seat people between their official lunch hours and dinner hours, but obviously Quartino is not one of those.