Republique, in iconic Campanile space, opens sooner thanks to OpenTable glitch

Finally, an opening date for Walter Manzke’s République, the French restaurant going into the iconic Campanile space. It will start serving the general public Nov. 25. But there will be a soft-opening period for a few lucky diners before that -- much to Manzke’s surprise.

Things had been quiet on the République front until this morning, when the restaurant revealed that an Open Table glitch over the weekend had allowed potential diners to make a reservation for this coming weekend. That’s well before the highly praised chef -- formerly at Patina, Bastide and Church and State -- had intended to start serving.

The news hit the blogosphere and things took off from there. Open Table has since removed the option to make a reservation for this weekend and wanted to smooth the waters by offering to reach out to diners to explain the error.

Instead, the République team decided to honor the existing reservations, which means they’ve moved their soft opening up to accommodate this unexpected rash of reservations. However, as of this writing, Open Table doesn’t seem to have gotten the message yet. Any query about reservations for the entire month is still met with an apology.

As it stands now, République will move into its soft opening this weekend, taking a maximum of 50 diners per night. Manzke will be serving only part of the menu and that will change daily as the kitchen team tweaks the dishes and the menu.

The rest of us will have to wait.

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Twitter: @sirenevirbila