TikTok's Celebrity Tactic For Scoring Restaurant Reservations
Trying to get last-minute reservations at popular restaurants has never been easy, and actually scoring such a reservation can feel like the holy grail for some avid restaurant-goers. It can seem like any restaurant with the smallest amount of hype is completely impossible to get into — even if you try to book in advance at the exact moment new reservations are released. Online reservation services can make things both easier and harder. They make the booking process convenient, but you'll have to compete against every other in-the-know foodie online, as well as a small army of bots.
Sometimes, when new tech is making things difficult, it might be time to pull out a tactic from the old playbook. A swarm of diners on TikTok are currently re-discovering the age-old practice of making a reservation under a celebrity's name to try and score highly coveted reservations. And who has become the Internet's biggest target for fake reservations? Actor and tequila mogul George Clooney.
A table for George Clooney
This online trend started when actress Dakota Johnson revealed in an interview with Jimmy Fallon that, as a teenager, she used to use George Clooney's name to get into exclusive restaurants. When she and her friends would arrive, they would tell the hostess that Clooney would join them later, and presumably ride out the hoax until it was too late for the restaurant to do anything about it. (Clooney, apparently, later told Johnson that he knew about her name-dropping but didn't ask her to stop.)
@hibselivre not the poor guy insisting lollll #georgeclooney #dakotajohnson
TikTok users — such as @hibselivre – have posted videos of themselves successfully using this trick to make reservations under Clooney's name. But Clooney isn't the only celebrity on every hostess's reservation book these days. Kendall Jenner is also a popular target for fake celebrity reservations, with TikTokers like @frenchieandbebe using her name when speaking with restaurant staff members.
But a trick like this can only go so far, as @lmalikk found out when she tried to make a reservation for the exclusive restaurant Nobu under Jenner's name and was asked for a password. It hasn't yet been reported if other restaurants are implementing similar protection measures, but it just goes to show that you should be careful when working the celebrity angle. Maybe you'll get that star table — but you're just as likely to end up with no reservation, having ticked off one of the most powerful hostesses in your city.