Enrico Box.

Food At first I thought this was an April Fool piece that had floated to the top of my online reading list until I noticed the date. From today's Observer:

London restaurants refuse to take bookings as diners are forced to wait two hours in queues

A line of people wait patiently on the pavement of a Soho street in London on a midweek evening. They shuffle slowly forward towards the commanding figure of the doorman, who warns them they will have to wait longer.

The queue is not for a modish nightclub but for a restaurant. It has become a common scene in central London and is spreading to other parts of the UK. Many restaurants now refuse to take reservations and tell customers they could wait up to two hours to eat.

Joyce Wang, a restaurant blogger, said she hated the new trend of queueing. "Now I try to get there early or wait a maximum of 15 minutes. If you are savvy, you don't go at peak times," she said.

As a fair weather friend to restaurants and eating out in general (because I can rarely relax) I can't imagine any meal is worth queuing two hours for unless it's the only food available for the reasons I expect you can imagine.  Is anything of such culinary uniqueness, such an experience that you would want to spend two hours waiting?  A burger?  Really?

Now I would imagine that if you are someone who's interested in food in the same way I'm interested in film and theatre and want to find out what X restaurant is doing with chicken that month I could, that is I could, imagine why you'd want to, if it's perhaps your job or you find yourself part of the culinary scene and possibly have to have an opinion of the work of such and such a chef.

But the general diner?  Why?  Why would you do this?