[ehickox]

Fair enough. I'm sure it's happening in nearly all large metro areas in developed nations. I only said that because I hadn't noticed this trend (at least not to this extreme degree) in the course of visiting other large metro areas in the US.

[dragonwriter]

It happens in smaller metro areas in the US; restaurants are notoriously marginal businesses in general, and the two basic success formulas for traditional full-service establishments seem to be “be completely full in a wide window around peak times—which tends to also mean have long waits at peak times” and “attract a very rich clientele and charge very high prices which don't require you to be constantly crowded to make a profit”.

There's also obviously the separate fast-food and fast-casual markets that focus on rapidly cycling customers with minimal delay and much lower service levels; they still try to be full as much as possible which still means queuing at peak times, but the queues tend to be shorter in time or just as deep (or deeper), and tend to involve actual physical, rather than merely logical, queues.

[chris_mc]

Japan has a long, long history of tiny restaurants and food carts. Most areas in Tokyo have many times more [0] restaurants than worldwide cities, just for this reason. There might be 20 small 8-seat ramen places in the same alleyway, whereas in other cities you'd have 2 or 3 larger restaurants spread out further.

[0] http://www.worldcitiescultureforum.com/data/number-of-restau...