City Weekend

The destinations, ranked

Eight of our cities work for a weekend where the city is the point.

Best first. This is an opinion, not a spreadsheet. If the top pick fits your dates and budget, stop scrolling.

Big groups cannot book a table online

Every reservation site caps out around six or eight. Your group is ten. So the table you want either does not exist or lives behind a phone number.

Above that cap you are usually talking to a private dining or events desk, and the deal changes. Expect a set menu instead of ordering off the card, a food and beverage minimum instead of a per plate price, and a deposit to hold the date. That is not a rip off, it is how a restaurant absorbs the risk of a ten top that does not show up.

Call four to six weeks out for the one dinner that actually matters. Leave the other two nights open. The group will not agree on three dinners anyway, and the good nights are usually the accidental ones.

The bar tab is the budget

Large parties usually carry an automatic gratuity, commonly eighteen to twenty percent, added before anyone gets a chance to argue about it. On a ten top that is real money and it is not optional, so put it in the per head estimate rather than finding it at the bottom of the bill.

Most places will not split a check ten ways either. One card pays and one guy spends the next week chasing nine people. Decide who that is before dinner rather than during, and settle the same night while everyone still remembers what they ordered.

The one thing everyone screws up

Booking three nights in the city centre because it looked convenient.

You are not walking anywhere at two in the morning as a group of ten. You are getting cars either way. Being six blocks out is often close to half the price for the same weekend, and across three nights and ten guys that difference buys the dinner you actually wanted.