Your Table Is Ready.The Clock Is Ticking.

Restaurants are enforcing strict time limits― whether or not diners are done.

- MEGAN KRIGBAUM

Earlier this summer, I met up with friends at the latest restaurant-that’s-more-like-a-bar on the Lower East Side. As we were handed our menus, our server reminded us with a tone of gentle but unwavering insistence: We needed to be out in 90 minutes. We raced through dinner—cocktails, a dozen plates to share—and in the end had time left over. (We ordered a bottle of wine to max out our minutes.)

I’d seen what happens to diners who blow their deadlines. Tables had been getting the pink slip in Brooklyn a few weeks before at an otherwise cozy spot in Fort Greene. I was seated next to a couple still picking at the bones of their whole fish when a manager asked whether they planned on staying for dessert. “We’re going to need this table back shortly,” she said. In a corner, a three-top got the boot during their last round of drinks.