[caption id="" align="alignright" width="250" caption="Reservations "]<img title="Reservations " src="http://www.bordeaux-quay.co.uk/images/main_pictures/230109_BordeauxQuay-144.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="377" />[/caption]

The reservation is sacrosanct in Bulgaria. It's serious business.  I didn't get it in the beginning. This said, I am not that I <em>get it</em> now.

Here are the basics: you make a reservation for a table to eat dinner or for drinks in a bar/club.  You give them your name, tell them what time you're coming and maybe pay a deposit. This should be pretty familiar for anyone reading the blog because surprise, surprise, it's exactly the same in the States.

However, unlike in the States, in Bulgaria there's multiple bookings for the same table.  So it's not like the restaurant will take a reservation at 7pm for a table, 8:30pm for the same table and another reservation at 10pm. Turn over doesn't work in the same way.

In Sofia, there's no hovering waiter or waitress waiting to see if you want dessert, pressuring you to order your meal or ready to rush you the bill.  This is nice but it also means that you might walk into a restaurant at 7pm and half of the tables will be empty and you'll be turned away because the tables have been set aside for dinners who've reserved the table but who wont appear until 9pm.<!--more-->

On the surface, this doesn't seem very practical to me.  It seems like there's got to be away to work things out so that I can eat dinner, the restaurant can make some money on my meal, and the others will also be able to eat.  This would be win-win.  (Or I guess seeing it would be good for three different groups of people it would be win-win-win but that's kind of a mouthful.)

Only, it doesn't work this way.  In Bulgaria, you make a reservation and you make it for the whole night. I mean that is nice but really, how to restaurants make it? I guess the answer is that they don't or they are scraping by--which is too bad really.

Then again the restaurant culture is different here in Sofia than in the States. Often it is the night rather than just one part of the night.

The difference is that in the States we make the restaurant a stop along the way.  I guess that it's a double sided thing.  We influence restaurant culture and restaurant culture influences our plans as well. I've been on my fair share of dates in the States where dinner was just part one followed by drinks or a movie or a house party. The pattern is the same with friends. We check out a new restaurant or an old favorite and then meet up with others for a show, at a bar or a house party.

Reservations at the restaurant? In DC, absolutely.  It's a see and be seen kind of town. Reservations at a bar? No way. No need.

But then again, we don't club/party in the same way Bulgarians do. I spent a large part of my Friday and Saturday nights in my twenties in hole-in-the-wall bars drinking beer out of pitchers or cheap rail drinks pre-mixed by the bartender.  No need for a table. No need for a dance floor. And get this, I was happy as a clam. I didn't know anything else.

The only place I know like this in Bulgaria is Bilkova on Shishman. It's one of the only bars I've been to and suffered waves of nostalgia. They've got it right--the music, the drinks, the feel--dancing too close to strangers. It's part hipster Brooklyn and part 14th Street more specifically Wonderland/Black Cat.  Often, I half expect that friends from my old life in DC will walk in.

On a whole, Bulgarians, it seems, prefer tables but tables require space and chairs. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with wanting  a table.  Actually, it's pretty civilized.  But as a result, the reservation is out in full force in Bulgaria.

The moral of this post? Woe unto you, if you make the mistake of not reserving a table and have a group of more than three or four.