Anyone been to Flour & Water for very early dinner? What's the wait?

[srr]

We are going to try an early dinner and want to avoid the crazy wait, if possible. We are going with our almost 4 year old (pizza freak) daughter. Is 5:15 early enough to get in line? 5:00?

[srr]

Just want to report back. We arrived at F&W at 5:15 and were probably the 5th or 6th party in line. By the time we got seated, we were offered the bar or the communal table. We chose the communal table and it was fine for us, as the stools are pretty high so our daughter could reach the table. Dinner was great. We had the tuna conserva, winter vegetable salad, and the cured steelhead with beets and horseradish. I liked them all, but I loved the tuna conserva and parsley root salad. Perfect texture on the fish, the parsley root and little nuggets of fried cardoons. Then we had rabbit raviolis (awesome and meaty) and tagliarini with pork blood sausage. The latter was dirty, in a good way, and not for the faint of heart. With that said, if you didn't know what it was you might just think it was just totally rich, unidentifiable sauce. We also had a margarita pizza. Tasty crust, if unexciting in comparison. The service was friendly and attentive. My only complaint was that they never gave us new plates, even after I asked for them. We had beets in our first course, and I had beet juice all over my plate. I really didn't want to mix it with pork blood sausage and rabbit ravioli and pizza. Whatever. I just wiped the plate with piece of bread. But it does seem like at those prices, I could get plates and silver reset for the second course. Tasty food, nonetheless.

[billraymond]

Just as the other responders say, the line starts early and goes late. I had a 8:30 rez last night and swung by around 7:30 and the place was incredibly busy. As Robert Lauriston points out, your best bet is Open Table. My experience is they are pretty good at pacing the tables so you are not waiting too long to get seated if you have a standing reservation.

[sfoutfit]

As much as I love F&W, Zero Zero may have it beat for pizza and you may have a better chance getting a table if you are going early anyway! Just a suggestion:)

[Robert Lauriston]

You can get a 5:30 reservation at Zero Zero pretty much any day you want. I think the pizza's as good or better than Flour + Water's.

[Rapini]

We tried for an early dinner on a Sunday, got there about 5:00, and were too far back in line to make it into the first seating. The wait from there was 45 minutes or some such. IMHO, the food was good, but I don't know that it was worth-the-wait good.

[Robert Lauriston]

I agree, there are places with pizza just as good that are easier to get into. Bizarre how people line up, especially when you can make a reservation if you plan a few weeks ahead.

[srr]

Yeah, I think the lining up thing is crazy, but I called a month ago for the night we wanted to go and the only reservation they had was 10:30 pm. Probably end up at Beretta or Gialina.

[mariacarmen]

their food is definitely not worth the wait. i too tried going for an early 5-ish dinner once, and there was at least an hour wait on a weekday. then we made a res 2 months out and had our dinner. meh. not bad but not worth that wait. Gialina's pizza is better than F+W's (and much, much better than Beretta's too, for that matter. In my opinion.)

[Robert Lauriston]

Opentable shows several 5:30 / 5:45 reservations available over the next couple of months.

[srr]

Have you ever tried to get into Defina Pizza early? I've only been for lunch. Maybe we'll try there.