Muse app now working with Opentable to make reservations

[pomodoro]

@Loaxley

the most cited place on Reddit. That’s a scary thought!

@Loaxley

an army of assistants who are geniuses in every field and never sleep.

I’ll admit that output with a map and clear presentation looks impressive and probably would save a lot of time for planning for a place like Florence!

your prompt is nicely specific. however, I wonder if the agent would disclose which sources were most influential in its decision next to each of its rankings, for both their inclusion and respective ordering. one, so a user could reference the sources for comparison (maybe the agent gave a lot of consideration to a blogger whose tastes the user trusts or doesn’t trust). but two, because you specifically directed it to “focus on reputable guides like Michelin, World’s 50 Best…”, “blogs if the author shows a high level of sophistication…”, etc. yet it provides the numerical ranking by Google and TripAdvisor, both of which are notoriously a bit touristy and often skew very differently from the kinds of sources you suggested it consider. I don’t use Reddit, but my impression is that Google or TripAdvisor scores wouldn’t necessarily be a better a much source to pull from!

I don’t doubt that this type of prompt and output could be a time-saver for planning some trips. but I wonder the level of practical expertise it can provide for example in another popular destination, such as Tokyo. Google, TripAdvisor, and the like would be terrible sources for a trip for people like us. to a certain extent, Michelin might be somewhat dubious as well. but if the agent pulled from a good source, say focusing on Tabelog, it would be kind of a catch 22. let’s assume for sake of argument that the highest numerical ranking is well correlated with the “best” restaurants. for the most part, these will not be bookable by the general public, or at least the kind of user relying on an AI agent to put together a list to consider. the “top” restaurants often have tiered levels of access based on the individual’s experience, and if a user has already built enough of a profile to access to such restaurants, then he or she wouldn’t need to use an AI to come up with a list of desirable destinations in the first place. I just scanned the top 50 ranked restaurants in Tokyo, and maybe 10-15% of them are possible to book with regularity by the general public. a fair amount of the 50 aren’t that hard at all but it’s once someone’s hit a certain level of access.

sorry I know this sounds elitist, just saying what good would a list of places do if the AI is pulling from Google and TripAdvisor if the reviews and ratings are overwhelmingly touristic or it’s pulling from good sources resulting in an unrealistic itinerary that’s going to be an 85+% fail rate at getting reservations?

with Japan specifically, there is also a lot of misinformation out there on how to book the “top” restaurants, in part because there’s a lot of reservation hack slop on social media that doesn’t come from actual or relevant experience. and perhaps in part because the restaurants themselves sometimes change their policy but don’t always make it clear publicly how to currently book them. take a world-famous sushi restaurant like Sukiyabashi Jiro Honten, who has changed their reservations policy many times. looking at blog reviews on how to get in or even using the published phone number is likely to fail. certain hotel concierges know how to get in successfully, but that information is not really written publicly. or for a couple of other famous restaurants, you have prominent and otherwise good food influencer-chef types getting names and addresses wrong, mistaking restaurants.

thanks for your all of your thoughts on this matter. I don’t mean to take up more of your time with this but I would actually be kind of curious what kind of list it would produce for your Florence prompt applied to Tokyo and see how much of it would overlap with a realistic itinerary that would be useful to people like us.

@mzonelli

I purely mean as an OpenTable partnership it’s a nothing.

I agree, but I think this is just a seemingly innocuous and maybe not very helpful start, but a gateway to more integrated services. If an AI agent has your calendar, your authorization to make some credit card charges (whether that’s restaurant prepayments, booking deposits, nonrefundable reservations fees, etc.) and can learn your tastes/lifestyle and knows your dates/location/means of travel/accommodations, the future partnership/advertising pipeline is pretty all-encompassing to make it full-service.

I also think this is a way that OpenTable is grasping to win the reservations war against Resy, Tock, and Sevenrooms/Doordash. OpenTable, Resy, and Tock have been kind of playing hot potato but Sevenrooms/Doordash has the cash I think and the prospect of controlling the ecosystem for dining out / takeout and other services. Whichever company can solve this for full AI integration will start with convenience, but that progresses to becoming indispensable, inextricable, and then they can justify expansion of prices/services/monopoly.

[J_L]

Luddite ask: Maybe use the same precise prompting for a dummy ask, but for Los Angeles instead of Florence, and see if we LA-based members of FTC agree with the results?

[pomodoro]

haha yea if you ask it to pull from forums like this one I wonder if it’ll pull from your guys’ best “47” or “51” list. not exactly ouroboros, I guess that’s already a concept discussed with AI in a different way.

I guess though Muse would prioritize Opentable restaurants, which I think is kind of the business angle for the partnership here. Making Opentable ostensibly more convenient to wean users off of the competing res platforms.

[robert]

Given the prompt, I wonder why Buca dell’Orafo, Trattoria Sostanza, and Osteria dell’Enoteca came up on top.

In the long run, the problem with outsourcing your research to a bot is that you won’t have the experience and background necessary to craft good prompts.

And the other long-run problem is that if everyone is getting answers from bots instead of browsing sites with human-authored expertise, there will be less profit in those sites and a decline in expertise.

[NYCtoLA]

Does this mean you can ask Muse to make you a res at a hard to book restaurant by booking exactly when the resys become available at a given time each month?

If yes, I think that would be another value add, but philosophically how is that different from using bots? And how would any people who aren’t using AI agents get any reservations at those hard to hook restaurants going forward? (unless opentable sets some sort of quota for no agent reservations)

[pomodoro]

@NYCtoLA

And how would any people who aren’t using AI agents get any reservations at those hard to hook restaurants going forward?

if all agents are able to book starting on the same date, then I don’t see how they could really be that successful if a restaurant is at capacity. my guess is that they would move onto backup choices that meet some pre-authorized criteria.

but if the platforms tiered access to reservation release times based on the individual user’s account, this could be a solution. for example, a prioritized user might get see availability for December starting say October 15, whereas a non-prioritized user might see December’s availability starting say November 1 (I’m making up these dates). so even if the non-prioritized user has a Muse-like agent ready to snipe a December res as soon as it’s able to, the prioritized user will have like a 2 week head start. I don’t know how well that policy would go over with diners though.

since many hard-to-reserve restaurants in Japan have a booking system that functions like this, some apps advertising immediate notifications to help users access difficult reservations (I’ve seen ads from one called Tablealert.app or something) basically will not be of any practical advantage, in my opinion. the notification windows are specific to the user, so what might be available for Tablealert will in many cases not apply to its users. or, if an app is the one to reserve, then the end user would be violating the terms of service for many of these hard-to-reserve restaurants. in other words, I don’t think there are many shortcuts one can take via an app to skip the line when dealing with online reservations. this is a little different than Muse as I think these apps are not AI agents, but I digress.

even still, the convenience seems sort of marginal. it’s more about setting a reminder on a certain calendar date and letting the agent click through the prompts.

@NYCtoLA

(unless opentable sets some sort of quota for no agent reservations)

I think this would be counterproductive to their apparent aim of the Muse x Opentable partnership to let the agent make it convenient for you. if a competitor reservation platform such as Resy or Sevendoors wanted to hinder Opentable’s attempt to create a competitive moat via Muse, I think that perhaps a ban on agent reservations would be a start. then eventually, Muse would only really work on Opentable restaurants. but what share of the most destination worthy restaurants exist on Opentable vs. Resy/Sevendoors/Tock?

but I don’t know nearly enough about AI to know if they’d be able to detect an AI making the reservation, though, given the above discussion on permissions.

EDIT: just skimmed the “LA 51 2025” list, and 7 were either closed or don’t take reservations, so of the 44 remaining, 22 were bookable on Opentable. so if Muse only worked with OPentable and was disallowed with resy/tock/sevendoors, then Muse would only be able to make reservations for half of those potentially bookable from the list.

[mzonelli]

What good is that if everyone is doing it

[honkman]

That’s future hard to get reservations will be then decided - how to get your next Birdsong reservation in SF

UFB 2 - Aug 8, 2025 - San Francisco

[J_L]

Lawd I hope the future isn’t one where only those who are AI-adept can procure reservations…

[Loaxley]

@J_L

Maybe use the same precise prompting for a dummy ask, but for Los Angeles instead of Florence, and see if we LA-based members of FTC agree with the results?

Prompt below. Sent it to my always-on AI server and went to bed. One shot request, no additional follow-ups.

We’re making a Los Angeles version of the Florence restaurant site. Use the same format and system we used for Florence, but this time just as a single self-contained HTML file (no login, database or editing needed). Assume we’re staying at the Peninsula Beverly Hills, 9882 S Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90212. Where we’re staying should have no bearing on which restaurants you pick or how you rank them - it’s only there to show transit (instead of walk) and drive times.

Please do thorough research on the best restaurants in Los Angeles. Focus on reputable guides and sources like Michelin, World’s 50 Best (incl. North America’s 50 Best), LA Times, NYTimes, James Beard, Mad Food (fka Air Jordan) & comparable guides; professional food critics; personal blogs if the author shows a high level of sophistication in discussing food and restaurants; and food enthusiast message boards such as FoodTalkCentral and Hungry Onion. You can also look at r/finedining. The rest of Reddit, The Infatuation and Eater LA generally aren’t reliable for reviews, so don’t use them as a main source - at most use them to back up something you found elsewhere. Ignore SEO blog spam/listicle type websites.

Rank purely on quality, using the guides to inform your own judgment rather than
regurgitating any one list. Focus on how strong and how independent each recommendation is, not just how many places mention it - a top placement means a lot more than a passing one, and the same opinion repeated across sources only counts once. Detailed, recent reviews should carry more weight than list placements, credible criticism should count against a place, and nowhere should get a boost just for being expensive or formal.

List the top 20-25 spots, ranked in order, and provide rationale - both qualitative and
quantitative - for each ranking. One thing that’s different from Florence: mark whether each place has a mandatory tasting menu (or omakase), an optional one, or is à la carte, and show this on both the ranked list and the full details page.

Result - see it for youself live here:

Los Angeles · A Restaurant Shortlist

By no means is this the be-all and end-all, but it’s quite helpful when researching a new place (as I did for Florence) to surface a shortlist of options. And if you don’t like how something was done, a quick follow-up can address that. Want more variety of cuisine? Just ask. Want less tasting menus? Just ask.

[Loaxley]

@robert

Given the prompt, I wonder why Buca dell’Orafo, Trattoria Sostanza, and Osteria dell’Enoteca came up on top.

All of those were on the original list, but not in this specific order. I moved those to the top after getting feedback from the others who will be in Florence.

@robert

In the long run, the problem with outsourcing your research to a bot is that you won’t have the experience and background necessary to craft good prompts.

I disagree, and in fact I think the opposite is true. That would be like saying “if you spend too much time Googling you’ll lose the expertise necessary to craft good Google queries”. On the contrary, the more you Google (or craft LLM prompts), the better you become at doing so.

@robert

And the other long-run problem is that if everyone is getting answers from bots instead of browsing sites with human-authored expertise, there will be less profit in those sites and a decline in expertise.

That is certainly true. LLMs are killing organic traffic to websites (and Google, by the way, is the biggest culprit with their LLM powered AI overview responses), which has made it nearly impossible to support a website with display ads.

@pomodoro

I wonder if the agent would disclose which sources were most influential in its decision next to each of its rankings

If you ask it to provide it’s methodology, as I did in the example above, then it can show you how the rankings were calculated. You can have it output the exact ranking calculations if you so desire. You can then tweak the criteria - weight this source less, this source more, weight this criteria (e.g. Michelin star) less or more. You could even have it build a live rating “calculator” where you tweak the weights on the website live and see how it would impact the rankings. Point being, it will do whatever you tell it to do.

@pomodoro

yet it provides the numerical ranking by Google and TripAdvisor, both of which are notoriously a bit touristy and often skew very differently from the kinds of sources you suggested it consider

To be clear, the Google/Tripdavisor rankings are shown for informational purposes only - I do find them to be a useful additional datapoint - and did not factor into the ratings whatsoever.

@pomodoro

what good would a list of places do if the AI is pulling from Google and TripAdvisor if the reviews and ratings are overwhelmingly touristic or it’s pulling from good sources resulting in an unrealistic itinerary that’s going to be an 85+% fail rate at getting reservations

You can tell the LLM what kind of sources to consider and which to exclude, and then of the included sources you can tell it roughly or exactly how to weight each source. Using Tokyo as a specific example, I would weight Tabelog much higher and Tripadvsior/Google much lower (if at all). I would also weight FTC/HO high, reputable professional critics high, there are some food bloggers who I would rate medium to high, Reddit /r/finedining medium-ish. As for the issue of it surfacing restaurants the average person can’t really reserve - as part of the prompt just tell it either to filter those out or explicitly flag them, or you can go into more detail and have it come up with a specific “reservation feasibility” system - it will do quite well if you leave it that vague, or you can be more specific with the rating system that you want (not open to the public, open to the public but nearly impossible, hard but doable, not hard, etc.).

@pomodoro

with Japan specifically, there is also a lot of misinformation out there on how to book the “top” restaurants

It will find the most recent discussion about how to book the restaurant on Reddit/FTC/HO/etc. and report that back as the current booking process/feasibility. You could even go a step further and tell it that for any restaurant with reservation process ambiguity, or if the latest information is from too long ago, to send an email to the restaurant asking for clarification on the booking process. Some places may not respond or provide any further detail, but then you didn’t have a chance of getting into those in the first place, and the lack of response is the answer in and of itself.

@pomodoro

If an AI agent has your calendar, your authorization to make some credit card charges (whether that’s restaurant prepayments, booking deposits, nonrefundable reservations fees, etc.) and can learn your tastes/lifestyle and knows your dates/location/means of travel/accommodations, the future partnership/advertising pipeline is pretty all-encompassing to make it full-service

Certainly, and I can see how that ventures into dystopian. However:
(1) These LLM agents can’t do anything you don’t explicitly authorize them to do, and you can revoke prior permissions at any time
(2) At the moment, there’s no evidence that any LLMs modify their responses to prioritize advertising or partnerships. That does not mean it won’t happen in the future.
(3) If something like (2) occurs, it’s easy switch to a different LLM provider (e.g., from Meta to OpenAI or Claude), or you can cut out the for profit providers entirely and switch to an open weight LLM provider like GLM/DeepSeek/Kimi/Qwen.

@pomodoro

Whichever [reservation] company can solve this for full AI integration will start with convenience, but that progresses to becoming indispensable, inextricable, and then they can justify expansion of prices/services/monopoly

Facilitating LLM integration is quite trivial. It’s essentially just exposing some API endpoints (or an MCP) that probably already exist elsewhere. Sevenrooms/Resy could roll out the same Muse integration as OpenTable in a week tops if they decided it was a priority.

@NYCtoLA

Does this mean you can ask Muse to make you a res at a hard to book restaurant by booking exactly when the resys become available at a given time each month?

If yes, I think that would be another value add, but philosophically how is that different from using bots?

@pomodoro

if all agents are able to book starting on the same date, then I don’t see how they could really be that successful if a restaurant is at capacity.

@J_L

Lawd I hope the future isn’t one where only those who are AI-adept can procure reservations…

On its own an AI agent has no benefit to procuring a hard to get reservation compared to an average person. Because of the time required for inference, it’s almost certainly worse than an average person. AI is distinct from bots, they are two completely separate pieces of technology. Muse users are not going to be stealing Hayato reservations from us.

[robert]

@Loaxley

That would be like saying “if you spend too much time Googling you’ll lose the expertise necessary to craft good Google queries”. On the contrary, the more you Google (or craft LLM prompts), the better you become at doing so.

If you Google, going through the results you learn about sites like Michelin, World’s 50 Best, LA Times, Reddit, Yelp, TripAdvisor, The Infatuation, etc. and over time get to know which to trust and which not to. If you only ever used an LLM, you wouldn’t know to tell it which to ignore or give less weight.

[pomodoro]

@Loaxley

to surface a shortlist of options. And if you don’t like how something was done, a quick follow-up can address that. Want more variety of cuisine? Just ask. Want less tasting menus? Just ask.

@Loaxley

If you ask it to provide it’s methodology, as I did in the example above, then it can show you how the rankings were calculated. You can have it output the exact ranking calculations if you so desire. You can then tweak the criteria - weight this source less, this source more, weight this criteria (e.g. Michelin star) less or more. You could even have it build a live rating “calculator” where you tweak the weights on the website live and see how it would impact the rankings. Point being, it will do whatever you tell it to do.

The output and customizability are certainly impressive especially given the speed with which this was created.

@Loaxley

Google/Tripdavisor rankings are shown for informational purposes only - I do find them to be a useful additional datapoint

when it comes to restaurants for travel, I kind of disagree but if they’re not being factored into the ratings at all then I guess what’s the harm.

@Loaxley

As for the issue of it surfacing restaurants the average person can’t really reserve - as part of the prompt just tell it either to filter those out or explicitly flag them, or you can go into more detail and have it come up with a specific “reservation feasibility” system - it will do quite well if you leave it that vague, or you can be more specific with the rating system that you want (not open to the public, open to the public but nearly impossible, hard but doable, not hard, etc.).

@Loaxley

It will find the most recent discussion about how to book the restaurant on Reddit/FTC/HO/etc. and report that back as the current booking process/feasibility.

this is an interesting point. part of the issue about what’s published is that not a lot of publicly available reviews will not make details access or difficulty explicit. and people that dine at very hard-to-reserve restaurants won’t reliably discus how difficult a place is to get in, because it can come off as boasting, or also if they procured access organically, then it’s not actually so difficult for them so their experience won’t be that relevant. literally for some restaurants that are written about in English here, a booking availability might be 3 weeks ahead for one user but over a year out for another user. the kind of user who’s finding out about it through AI is likely to be closer to the latter, though reports back on forums like these are probably coming from users closer to the former. in other words, publicly available information is not very explicit or reliable, it can be self-selecting or very biased to the point that the AI’s recommendations won’t drill down to the specificity needed for dependable planning.

@Loaxley

@pomodoro

Whichever [reservation] company can solve this for full AI integration will start with convenience, but that progresses to becoming indispensable, inextricable, and then they can justify expansion of prices/services/monopoly

Facilitating LLM integration is quite trivial. It’s essentially just exposing some API endpoints (or an MCP) that probably already exist elsewhere. Sevenrooms/Resy could roll out the same Muse integration as OpenTable in a week tops if they decided it was a priority.

@Loaxley

(2) At the moment, there’s no evidence that any LLMs modify their responses to prioritize advertising or partnerships. That does not mean it won’t happen in the future.
(3) If something like (2) occurs, it’s easy switch to a different LLM provider (e.g., from Meta to OpenAI or Claude), or you can cut out the for profit providers entirely and switch to an open weight LLM provider like GLM/DeepSeek/Kimi/Qwen.

yes, though the cynical side of me thinks that the way business will likely go is ultimately creating a whole travel ecosystem, which is what I was referring to here by “full AI integration” (not just the Opentable reservations assistant like Muse but rather the AI making recommendations based on a thoroughly commercialized itinerary with suggestions sponsored by its partners).

I find it really easy to imagine the following scenario: a user getting inspired to travel from her social media feed. she suddenly decided she wants to go “old money chic” and travel to Paris adjacent to when influencers will be there. she asks the AI to help her plan it. the AI makes suggestions for available bookings through its affiliate partners from hotels, the flights, reservations for a pipeline of partner restaurants nearby (not necessarily the restaurants themselves but say the parent company who makes the list), things to sightsee to take pictures that help her look a certain way, the corresponding outfits, etc.

extrapolating this idea from the Opentable-Muse partnership… I’m guessing that if prompted for a list of available restaurants in a certain category, Muse would not prioritize restaurants exclusively bookable via Resy/Sevendoors/Tock. going off of this board’s 2025 LA 51 rankings let’s say, I’m guessing that eventually if Muse were asked to book the best pizza in LA regardless of style, it might privilege #36 Pizzeria Mozza over #11 Pizzeria Sei even if access was the same.

[pomodoro]

anyway I appreciate the robust discussion. not trying to get at you personally at all! I’ve quote responded to a lot of your points but I don’t want it to feel like I’m zeroing in on you. AI is a topic I’ve been musing about for a while, though I don’t know the technical side of it at all. you clearly have some expertise in this field and I appreciate your responses!

I’ve been seeing that an increasing amount of expert knowledge when it comes to food and travel is being taken behind subscription paywalls like Substack or paid newsletters. recently, a famous food influencer decided to publish a Tokyo dining guide for 79 GBP charged every 3 months!

I really bristled at the idea of the price. she does travel there a lot but also I understand where she’s coming from. she has a big following and some expertise especially through her partnering contributors. having it free and public would ruin things because it would very likely get co-opted by other creators. and, it would make access to restaurants increasingly difficult and likely burden the restaurants pretty quickly. many people have made Tokyo planning a business.

however, in a sort of repudiating way, I wanted to create my own in-depth Tokyo travel guide here just based on my own experiences, totally free and public for the community, nothing commercial. I go to Tokyo about 5x / yr and pay for everything myself of course with no business connection to the F&B, and I book organically myself never using a tour or paid-for reservations assistant planning service or any kind of workaround. I thought this would be a really valuable guide for the community here just to share my enthusiasm for likeminded users and provide detailed information including booking along with various backup alternatives. not because I’m some expert but because I think my experiences could be practically helpful as I’ve guided several friends and family in their trips. in part because hotel concierges no matter how high end can’t really provide much help when it comes to Tokyo.

this was just a personal project of mine I’ve been thinking about doing, and eventually for Paris as well. while this is a public website of course, I was hoping that any guide would be used pretty much by only this forum or at least other humans who join to participate in this community. this might be antiquated, but I like the idea of information coming organically through discussion with other humans. I might be very naive about this, but I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with where things are headed and will likely go more offline in the future.

[J_L]

Ganbatte @pomodoro-san! Your street cred with us here on FTC goes a long way! Human-human interactions will continue to be valued. Hopefully we may even share a meal somewhere down the line…

[hungryhungryhippos]

@pomodoro

I was hoping that any guide would be used pretty much by only this forum or at least other humans who join to participate in this community.

I think if this was the case you should create snippets here and put the majority of it behind some type of login portal.

Unfortunately AI and other ppl less committed to participating within the community will take it and misuse it for the exact reasons that you fear.

[Quoinstones]

wow yes a Pomodoro Tokyo guide would be amazing! Whatever the fate of all human knowledge / culture / online reservation systems, I imagine your experience would offer quite a lot to folks here (certainly to me, at least) for a good many years to come. Your posts are already a great resource, but realistic / practical guidance for Tokyo remains in short supply, I think. If it needs to be locked down in some way, so be it, but I hope you’ll give it a go!

[Bagel]

@pomodoro That would be an amazing idea and resource! But yeah agree with everyone else you’ll probably need some minimal gatekeeping to avoid getting all your stuff stolen by LLMs. They’re powerful tools but I’d hate for them to freeload off your knowledge and experience. They’ve already got plenty from Tabelog etc but nuance is so important with food and beverage.

One thought that I’ve seen more of online about the age of AI is that taste becomes ever more important. Especially with something that must be lived like a restaurant or beverage experience, an AI can only go so far. Always enjoyed reading your write ups and hope to see more of what you’re willing to share wherever.

[burritoking]

@pomodoro

I was hoping that any guide would be used pretty much by only this forum or at least other humans who join to participate in this community

you could always post in the

[small_h]

Wait, Are Any of These AI Restaurant Reservation Apps Even Legal?