OpenTable

I love the convenience of making reservations on this app, but I’ve given it 3 stars as it needs some improvements to go from good to great. OpenTable is great as most places use it, but if a competitor were to come up with a better user experience, I’d switch in a heartbeat. 1) Needs functionality to redeem points for dining coupons electronically. It’s 2018, why can’t I get a barcode that can be scanned at a restaurant? I tried to redeem points last weekend and it said to go to my desktop...some folks don’t even use a desktop outside of work. This is a huge miss. 2) Needs a better layout of local restaurants and navigation. I’ll search for local restaurants and after listing a few, it jumps to those 20 miles away. I’m in a huge metro suburb and I want to narrow in on a certain town and not get mixed results with places far away. I go out a lot and do a mix of city and suburbs but for folks not familiar with the area, it could be deceiving. For example, searching for something close by and you see an interesting place and don’t realize it’s further than you wanted until you click on the restaurant to explore.

We are regulars at a local restaurant (1-2 times a week) and we always made reservations through the OpenTable app to avoid waiting in line. Sometimes they get too busy or have new host staff and apparently forget to check us in, so OT sends an email a few days later to ask if you attended your reservation. In the past, they’d check with the restaurant but when this recently happened to us, Khadejah asked for a scanned copy of our receipt. I explained that, for security reasons, I don’t feel comfortable sending copies of my credit card receipts (not to mention we shred anything with CC info) but I offered the names of staff we spoke to that evening with whom she could verify, and that we ALWAYS sit at table 10. Nope, she insisted on a receipt to give us credit for the visit. Why the change? Why demand personal financial information in a time when ID theft and credit card theft are rampant? I can tell you who saw me, who spoke to me, where I sat, heck- even what I wore, but that’s not sufficient? Unless there’s a change in this policy, we will likely begin using one of the many other reservation services available.

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We made a 6:15 reservation at Kasai for my daughter’s 18th birthday with 4 of her friends. We were told when we arrived that the teppanyaki table we were waiting for had their check and was about to leave. 40 minutes later we were finally seated. The manager was very apologetic and even had appetizers on the house waiting when we arrived at our table. Everything else was great until the waiter delivering our soups looked like he purposely poured the soup all over my daughter. I actually watched him like it was in slow motion tilting the soup bowl onto her lap. She was soaked the rest of the night. The other waiter filled several of the soda glasses with water all night. The food was very good and the teppanyaki chef may have been the best we have had! The waiter at the end handed us the check and did not warn us that an 18% gratuity was already added. The final straw was when the waiter delivered bite sized cakes and my 11 year old daughter asked if there were any cashews or pistachios in them and the waiter said there are no nuts. She is allergic to both cashews and pistachios. She picked a chocolate one and bit into it only to find a trio of pistachios, strawberry and vanilla flavored cake. She immediately spit it into my napkin. The food was really good but there were too many other things that went wrong for us to visit again!

My husband and I had the pleasure of celebrating our first year anniversary at this fabulous restaurant! We dined with CHRISTINE ( and her assistant Alex) let me tell you, had it not been for her our experience would not have been the same! Although we briefly met her, it was like she knew us!!! She was incredibly knowledgeable. Christine knew what we were going to order next it was absolutely one of our favorite dining experiences EVER! Every suggestion was personally customized for us and paired with what we were drinking! Trust me we are tough critics and she made exceptional suggestions ,which we followed, and she was dead on! Christine thank you so much for making our first year anniversary beyond memorable! Gordon Ramsey has a great reputation and it’s because of YOU that he’s able to keep this reputation! I will make this a yearly tradition and I will expose all my friends to this incredible dining experience! Thanks again Christine we will never forget this! Our food was fantastic but it tasted that much better because of the service we were given!

It's a useful service that I've used for years but there are a couple of annoying things about the app: 1) first of all, because you're on mobile, the app defaults you to "book a table near me now" mode and it's a little hard to navigate out of that. Most of the time I'm using the app, it's because I'm on the go or in a meeting - not because I need a table right then. It's annoying to constantly figure out how to book a table for a future date, in a distant neighborhood. It takes way too many clicks to do this. App designers: there's more than one mobile use case; more than one user journey. 2) rebooking a table doesn't seem to work. I tried at various times of the day and kept getting error messages, or no error just no success. I ended up having to call the restaurant directly which to me, defeats a lot of the purpose of OpenTable. Also, as others have noted, using rewards is a pain. This is the fault of the company, not the app, so it doesn't figure into my app rating, but I would advise against giving an Open Table gift certificate as a gift to anyone. There are way too many limitations, rules, and annoying steps to redeem.