New York does this every few years. The calendar fills up, the big names come out, and suddenly every food group chat is just people frantically comparing reservation strategies. This fall is one of those seasons, with openings from Daniel Boulud and Daniel Humm leading a wave of new spots across the city.

I don't love fighting for reservations. I once set an alarm for a 6 a.m. Resy drop in Copenhagen, missed it, and ate kebab on a curb feeling genuinely sorry for myself. But when the lineup is this good, you set the alarm anyway.

Boulud and Humm are the headline grabbers, and fair enough. These are two chefs who could open a restaurant serving toast and people would camp outside. But what really strikes me is the volume. This is a genuine surge, the kind of season that makes you think the people declaring New York's dining scene "over" have clearly never tried to get a table in October.

What I'd tell you, as someone who plans entire trips around meals: don't fixate only on the famous ones. The big-name rooms will be booked solid for months and half the seats will go to people who came for the name on the door. The smart move in a season like this is to chase one or two of the splashy openings and then fill the rest of your itinerary with the quieter debuts that ride in under the noise. Every opening season has them, the small places opened by sous chefs stepping out on their own, and those are the tables you can actually get.

And if you're traveling in for this rather than living there, build the trip like a tasting menu. One big reservation as the anchor, spaced out so a cancellation doesn't wreck the whole day. Then leave gaps. Some of my best meals in New York have come from wandering into a place with a short menu and no line at 5:45 p.m., which I realize sounds like advice from your grandmother but works anyway.

Practical bit: set your Resy notifications now, not the week before. Watch for soft-open announcements on the restaurants' Instagram accounts, because those preview nights are often easier to book and cheaper too. And have a backup list. New York in a season like this rewards flexibility more than it rewards stubbornness.

Where would you go first, Boulud or Humm?