Hubert is the hottest restaurant in town right now. But you know that already, right? Most of the team at Time Out have already tried to get a table. Some have won. Some have failed. In light of this, we’ve made a list of how to get a table, so you’re not left hanging around for two and a half hours waiting to park your butt.
1. Go early in the week
If you turn up on a Friday night, every bar and hip-ass restaurant in the city is going to be packed, especially awesome places like Hubert. It’s closed on Sundays, but try going in on a Monday or Tuesday and you’re far more likely to nab a seat. At 7.30pm on a Tuesday we saw plenty of seats still left in the restaurant-bar.
2. Don’t muck around after work
Go straightaway when you finish work – don’t head home and change your clothes or have a drink or whatever people who don’t live miles out of the city do on a weeknight. We headed over there at 5pm and got a table straight away – no lines, no wait-time. And once you’re in, you can stay as late as you like (they’re open until 1am).
3. Alternatively, muck around a lot
Australians typically dine early. Dinner rush hours in this country are usually between 7pm and 9pm. So get really into the French (or Spanish) spirit, and dine very late. We're talking 10.30pm on a weeknight here. Just push your lunch hour back to 3pm, and you'll make it.
4. Book a table
They don’t take bookings for less than six, but this is the sort of food you want to be sharing (case in point: the whole chicken fricassée). Book a table for a group and you can order whatever you want, come in at whatever time you like, and you won’t have any of the looming stress of gambling with your hunger.
5. Rope in strangers
Stefanie Collins of B&C gave us this idea: book a table for six, no matter how many people you're actually going with, then just ask a few people who are waiting in line to join you for dinner. You might even make new friends (or pick up – it's pretty romantic down there).
6. The final call
Give up and go to Frankie’s around the corner for beer and pizza. You can stay till 3am and bitch about how you didn’t get into Hubert and didn’t want to go anyway and it’s probably shit etc etc (it isn’t shit, it's really good).
Want to know what we thought about Hubert? Check out our full review here.