The spontaneous joy of eating at the bar, the last bastion of walk-in dining

In April, two friends and I stood in the entryway of June’s All Day, a sunny, French-inspired café in Austin, Texas, contemplating whether the rain would hold out long enough for us to have lunch on the patio. 

“Three spots just opened up at the bar,” the hostess said. 

With little said beyond glances and nods, we took up our perch on the curved corner of the long, white marble bar, next to a woman wearing her swimsuit and a towel. “Sorry I didn’t have time to change!” she told her companion before ordering a margarita. (Somehow the unspoken rules of dining room attire don’t carry the same weight in the bar.) My friends and I spent the next few hours taking the “All Day” part of the restaurant’s name a little too literally: sipping low-octane cocktails and slowly noshing on crispy tempura eggplant and slabs of sourdough with butter and house-cured ham. The conversation meandered in the relaxed sort of way it only does on vacation. 

Ever since that rambling lunch, I’ve been dining out at the bar more often. This is partly due to the maddening business of snagging a restaurant reservation any less than a month in advance in most cities. (Reservation searches were up 107 % in New York alone in 2022, according to Yelp.) But I’ve also come to appreciate the ways a meal at the bar differs from that at a table, owing to its more impromptu nature as the last real “walk-in” option. 

The tone of the evening is cemented at the triumphant moment in which a couple of bar seats open up at the restaurant where you decided to try your luck, despite knowing every table was booked till close. Suddenly, the mood shifts from hangrily researching back-up restaurant options to utter bliss: “We’re in!” 

Because those barstools feel hardwon — even if you only waited a few minutes to snag them — you instinctually adjust your expectations. Who cares that this backless, mid-century barstool barely fits the average human bottom? Or that the bartop’s lipped edge makes it hard to find a resting place for one’s elbows while attacking a messy burger? Or that people frequently jostle you from behind, their necks craned in the hope of catching the bartender’s eye so she’ll take their drink order? You get to spend the next couple of hours surveying your empire from above the dining room, a temporary fixture of the bartender’s roving gaze for however long you stay. 

The bartender knows the neck craners are there, of course; she spotted them the moment they walked in. Like the fishmonger at a harried market stall, she keeps tabs on the order of arrivals, quietly putting those who cut the line in their proper place. Meanwhile, your relationship with her takes on an easier rapport since you secured that seat; maybe you even sprinkle in some idle chatter or a wry observation with your drink order. 

The whole playbook leans a little looser in the bar. The growing practice of restaurants to require diners to order the whole meal at once is usually absent here. Instead you order things whenever you get the bartender’s attention, when a pang of hunger strikes, or simply when space frees up for more plates. 

There’s something sublimely wicked about cramming the narrow bar top with dishes sized for a dining room table rather than a slab of wood or formica. It seems to suit the livelier, devil-may-care vibe of this little corner of the restaurant that’s all your own for a slice of time. 

“Any dessert?” The bartender asks. You inevitably respond with some banal comment about liquid dessert as you savor those last few sips of wine and the final moments perched at the very best seat in the house, which you stumbled upon on one of life’s increasingly elusive whims.