What Is Dorsia? Is It Real, and How to Get a Reservation

There are two Dorsias. The first is the restaurant in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, the one Patrick Bateman can never get into, and it is fictional. The second is a real members-only booking app, listed on the App Store as Dorsia Members Club by Elomi Corporation, which took the name and sells prepaid tables at restaurants such as Torrisi and Carbone. If you searched how to get a reservation at Dorsia, the answer depends on which one you mean: you cannot book the first, and you book the second by applying for a membership, paying at least $200 a year, and prepaying a minimum spend on every table.

Everything about the app below comes from Dorsia’s own FAQ, Terms of Use and restaurant pages, its App Store listing, or dated press, all read on November 7, 2026. What the membership costs gets its own page, how much Dorsia costs, and whether it is worth paying is in is Dorsia worth it.

Is Dorsia a real restaurant?

Not the famous one. The Spectator’s restaurant critic Tanya Gold put it plainly in October 2011: “Dorsia is the fictional restaurant in Bret Easton Ellis’s excellent novel American Psycho.” The novel came out in 1991, and Mary Harron’s film followed in 2000 (it premiered at Sundance on January 21 and opened in American cinemas on April 14). In the film’s plot, as Wikipedia summarises it, Bateman envies a colleague, Paul Allen, who is “able to easily secure reservations at Dorsia, an elite restaurant Bateman cannot access.” So the answer to how Patrick Bateman got a reservation at Dorsia is that he never did. That is the joke.

The name has been borrowed more than once. The same 2011 Spectator column reviewed a private members’ club called Dorsia on London’s Cromwell Road, years before the app existed. The app is the one people mean now, and its name is deliberate. Caper Media’s profile of the company, published August 3, 2026, opens: “Dorsia was a joke about status and unattainability in American Psycho.” It also reports that “Ellis personally signed off on Lotenberg’s appropriation of the made-up restaurant, and became an early user.” Marc Lotenberg is Dorsia’s founder and chief executive.

What the Dorsia app is

Dorsia describes itself as “the global hospitality platform and technology company unlocking access to the world’s most coveted reservations, events, and experiences.” The legal entity behind it, per its Terms of Use, is Elomi Corporation, with a Miami Beach address. Aventura Magazine (July 17, 2026) called it “a Miami-based, membership-driven platform” and named co-founders Joshua Stern and Gabriella Shteiman alongside Lotenberg. Business Insider reported on August 26, 2025 that Dorsia launched in 2022, had raised $50.4 million and was valued at $146 million (figures Dorsia confirmed to it), and had “about 30,000 paying members.”

The model is a prepaid table. In the guide it publishes for partner restaurants, Dorsia says “members prepay a minimum spend per person at the time of booking that goes toward their food and beverage spend, excluding tax and tip.” What restaurants get, per its partner page, is that “we optimize revenue via guaranteed minimum spends” and “provide a reliable customer base by eliminating no-shows and cancellations.” Tables are not resold: the FAQ says “Reservations are non-transferable” and “Selling or trading reservations is strictly prohibited.” Dorsia also sells events; its press page lists a Dorsia Club at the Miami HEAT’s Kaseya Center, announced October 21, 2026.

How to get a reservation at Dorsia, step by step

1. Apply in the app. Membership starts with an application in Dorsia Members Club, and the FAQ says “Applications and member nominations are reviewed on a rolling basis.” The Terms require you to be 21 or older and say Dorsia’s membership decisions are “final and non-appealable.” Lotenberg told Business Insider that “Our entire thing is based on who you know, who you're connected to, and who knows you.” One App Store reviewer (August 20, 2026) wrote that applicants without a referral are asked for access to their contact list.
2. Buy a membership. “Bookings are reserved for Access members and above.” As of November 7, 2026 that means $200, $5,200 or $25,200 a year, and the higher tiers see tables first. The full breakdown is in how much Dorsia costs.
3. Pick a table. Aventura Magazine describes searching “by city, date, party size, cuisine, and neighborhood.” Per the FAQ, “Table and event availability typically opens about 30 days in advance, though timing varies by restaurant or venue,” and Premium Plus members get “first access to everything on Dorsia.”
4. Prepay the minimum. For a listed slot, “members prepay a locked-in minimum spend to confirm the reservation,” and “100% of the prepayment goes toward the total bill.” The Terms call this an Instant Booking: you pay the minimum and the table is confirmed.
5. Or send a custom request. If the time you want is not listed, you can request it “with a proposed minimum spend per person,” and “the restaurant will confirm or deny the request given their availability.” Your card is pre-authorized and released if the request is denied, expires or is cancelled. The documents disagree on the cutoff: the Terms say an unanswered request is denied 15 minutes before the requested time, while the restaurant playbook says 30.
6. Show up as yourself. “Members must be present for their reservation,” must follow “the restaurant’s dress code and code of conduct,” and count as a no-show if they do not check in within 15 minutes of the booking time. At Dorsia Pay venues you see a live check and can “get up and go without waiting for the server to bring a physical check.”
7. Change plans only in the app. The FAQ warns that “emailing us or calling the restaurant will result in forfeited minimum spend.” Cancel 8 or more hours ahead and the minimum comes back as Dorsia credit; inside 8 hours you lose half.

Where Dorsia works and which restaurants it lists

The FAQ says “Dorsia operates across more than 400 venues in 25 global destinations, including New York, Miami, London, Los Angeles, and Dubai, as well as seasonal hotspots like St. Tropez, Ibiza, and the Hamptons.” The website’s city menu on November 7, 2026 listed New York, Miami, Palm Beach, Mexico City, the Hamptons, Los Angeles, San Francisco, California Wine Country, Aspen, Boston, Chicago and Saint Barthélemy in North America; London, Paris, Ibiza, Monaco, Saint-Tropez and Cannes in Europe; and Dubai. Martha’s Vineyard and Courchevel were marked “Back Soon” and Mykonos “Back in 2027.” The App Store listing’s “Now Serving” list also names Provence, the Amalfi Coast and Mallorca, so the two lists do not match exactly.

Each city page is the closest thing to a public Dorsia list of restaurants. On November 7, 2026 the New York page had more than 130 entries, among them Torrisi, Carbone New York, Don Angie, Semma, COQODAQ, Restaurant Daniel and Rezdôra, with a few events such as a members’ night at Semma mixed in. Miami listed about 60, including Carbone Miami and COTE Miami, and London about 55, including Carbone London and Gymkhana. The pages show names only. Minimums, times and party sizes appear in the app.

How a restaurant appears there is set out in Dorsia’s playbook. Restaurants hold a set of tables for members, which the playbook calls “Dorsia’s allocated inventory,” and a table nobody books goes back to the restaurant at a release time the restaurant chooses. Custom requests are “always in addition to the Dorsia guaranteed inventory.” Some restaurants say the arrangement out loud. Torrisi’s own site says its reservations “are booked exclusively through our authorized reservation platform, Resy, or through Dorsia, our partnered members-only reservation platform.” If that is the table you are after, the Resy side is covered in Torrisi reservations, and the rest of the city’s toughest rooms are in hardest restaurants to book in NYC.

Dorsia reviews: what members praise and criticise

On November 7, 2026 the Dorsia Members Club app rated 4.4 out of 5 from 1,382 App Store ratings, and the spread is lopsided at both ends: 1,139 five-star ratings, 175 one-star, and only 68 in between. The praise is about certainty and convenience. One reviewer (June 5, 2025) singled out its “guaranteed, pre-paid reservations model”; another (January 14, 2024) wrote, “This app has enabled me to make same-day reservations at my preferred restaurants”; a third (October 15, 2024) said, “Also love not having to pay on site.”

The criticism is about tiers and minimums. A reviewer on October 18, 2026 wrote that after paying for Premium, “a vast majority of high-value reservations are blocked behind another tier called Premium Plus, which costs $25,000” (it is $25,200 as of November 7). Another, on August 20, 2026, wrote, “Some minimums are just outrageous on principle,” and complained of “availability at super early (5:30pm) or super late (10:30pm) time slots.” The New York Hots review of January 19, 2026 tells the same story from a member who says “I joined for Torrisi” and then found the best tables in the top tier. Dorsia’s side, in Business Insider, is that behaviour counts as much as money: “We kick people off of the platform,” Lotenberg said of members who treat staff badly.

Where SeatSwiper fits next to Dorsia

SeatSwiper is not affiliated with Dorsia, and it does a different job. Dorsia sells you a table its partner restaurants set aside, for a membership and a prepaid minimum. SeatSwiper watches the restaurant’s ordinary public book on Resy, SevenRooms or OpenTable and books the table the moment one opens or someone cancels, on your own account and in your own name, with nothing resold or transferred. The first booking is free. After that it is a flat $5, charged only when it actually books the table, with no subscription. A cancellation watch on a date that is already full costs $1 to start, charged when the watch begins even if no table ever opens; that $1 is not covered by the free first booking and is not refunded, and the same $5 applies if the watch wins you the table. It can’t get your account banned, because it books on your own account and checks every few minutes, never nonstop.

Dorsia wins where its tables are concerned: the allocated tables and the Premium Plus tables never reach the public book, so SeatSwiper cannot book them, and Dorsia confirms a listed table the moment you pay. SeatSwiper can lose a race for a single table, works only on those three platforms, and needs your reservation login to book as you. If you are weighing the two approaches, reservation alerts vs auto-booking lays out the categories, TablePass vs SeatSwiper compares a per-booking rival, and what happened to Appointment Trader explains why booking in your own name matters in New York now.