Will wait for food?

The psychology of lining up

One night on vacation in Palm Springs a few years back, some friends and I took a cab to a trendy little restaurant inside a strip mall. The place famously didn’t take reservations; instead, one of the owners jotted down our name and group size on a clipboard. “I’ll call you when the table’s ready,” he said, the breeze ruffling his gauzy, button-town top. He noted archly that if we left the parking lot at any point, our names would promptly be slashed from the list. (Ruthless behavior from someone in such a laid-back shirt!) This being peak dinner hour on a Friday in a non-walkable area of town, we had few alternatives. So instead, we sat on the curb for an hour and a half, our glum faces aglow in the light from the gas station. I don’t even remember what we ate for dinner.

“Not worth the wait,” my husband wrote, in maybe the fourth Yelp review he’s ever written.

Under normal circumstances, like when not on vacation, my threshold for waiting for a meal is usually around 30 minutes, unless there’s a bar and opportunity for snacks onsite. I prefer to line up for breakfast or a pastry as opposed to dinner—I think because there’s built-in security knowing that it doesn’t take people long to wolf down a pert little egg sandwich or a croissant, even the kind that’s been crossbred with a chocolate chip cookie (le crookie), and thus demands precious documentation before eating.

While on a story assignment a few weeks ago, I got my husband up early on a Saturday to line up for one of Chicago’s most famous breakfast sandwiches at the part bakery, part modern Filipino restaurant, Kasama. We timed our arrival just after the restaurant’s 9 a.m. opening, only to find that the line was almost two blocks long and showing no sign of movement. I guess if we’d been smart, we would’ve arrived at, what, 7:30 to nab that first seating? (Is this an Air Jordans release?)

Kasama also offers online ordering, which opens when the restaurant does. “This is the secret to bypassing the line,” friends told me. “You can get your egg sandwich within 30, 45 minutes tops!” On this particular Saturday, however, I was informed that the breakfast sandwiches in my online cart at 9:01 wouldn’t be ready for pickup until 11, at which point they would officially be brunch sandwiches. As a morning person who’s also ravenous within moments of waking up, I find such timeframes utterly unworkable—hence why I haven’t eaten this delicious breakfast sandwich in almost three years.

When I polled my Instagram town square, most people said they too will usually wait no more than 30 minutes for food. (There are exceptions, like if they have access to the bar, or it’s their birthday and they have to have that one burger, or it’s a nice day and they’re waiting for brunch, which in and of itself demands the more leisurely attitude of a late sleeper or functioning hungover person.)

Tim McKirdy, managing editor at VinePair, mused that there’s “an element of (Anthony) Bourdain, “Chef’s Table,” Netflix food culture at play” nowadays that makes people more tolerant of lining up. Oh my god, I have to go there and try that thing I saw on that travel show. And I (probably) have to provide visual evidence on social media, plus a pithy caption with my own hot take. “But this decreases exponentially with age,” he added wisely. Indeed, it’s worth noting the age range of people who stand in long-ass lines.

The pandemic probably stretched our collective capacity for waiting, in part because we had fuck all else to do, and because things like bagels got really, really good in that time. And as you well know if you’ve ever lined up for a really good bagel—and panicked while watching the available flavors get crossed off the little board as you edged closer—there simply can’t be too many of them. That’s the thing about stuff you line up for, though. Sometimes it runs out, leaving you in a tiny if existential crisis. Will you settle for a cinnamon-raisin? Maybe, but you’ll be bratty about it.

Kurvball Whiskey’s chief fire stoker, Lisa Leventhal, who recently relocated to Dallas from Chicago, told me she will wait a seemingly limitless amount of time for barbecue. Then again, this is basically a prerequisite for great Texas barbecue.

“Hours for BBQ—HOURS!” she said. “Legit—other people have camped out for it.” She recently waited ages at a place only to learn that it had in fact run out of the dish she lined up for in the first place. Undeterred, she ordered brisket instead, which she says was the best she’d ever had.

When I think about it, waiting for barbecue does feel sort of innate. After all, barbecue itself takes hours—even days—of patiently coaxing huge slabs of meat to smoky, pull-apart submission. There’s marinating, indirect heat, spritzing and sauce-mopping. Sometimes you swaddle the food up like a baby after you’ve smoked it and move it somewhere else to finish cooking in its own juices. In short, it’s a lot of waiting. So on some level, you the diner are honoring it by putting in the time, too. Plus, you’re theoretically doing so in a warm, often sluggishly humid place, where I imagine everyone keeps folding lawn chairs and a cooler with iced-down Lone Stars in their pickup trucks anyway. Here, it’s just another Saturday. Here’s it’s a lifestyle.

Plus, there are a lot of ways to multitask in line these days. You can read or do the crossword, answer emails, scroll through TikTok, keep your Duolingo streak alive, or watch Bravo on your phone. That’s a lifestyle, too—hanging around for unknown stretches of time being halfway present, but always finding ways to pass the time. In fact, lining up for food might suit this moment more than I’d like to admit.

Every time I pass by a restaurant or bakery with a line snaking out the door and down the street, I wonder how many of the people there are regulars. Do they live down the block and have visuals on the best times to show up? Maybe someone on staff sneaks them in through a side door to their regular table. Or perhaps they simply, contentedly factor the ungodly wait into the allotted time they set aside to go to their favorite place to eat their favorite meal. Maybe it’s just part of the charm of the restaurant.

For the rest of us queuing up for the first time, the agonizing allure of the unknown makes our brains go to any lengths to justify the wait. We figure it’s gotta be good if this many people lined up, or if that many people posted a delicious looking photo of it, or if it’s in a little strip mall next to a gas station. Anyway, we’ve been here this long. Might as well see what all the fuss is about.