Restaurant discovery and booking across Resy and OpenTable
Maître d'MCP
An MCP-based that provides a set of tools to discover restaurants, checks availability, and books reservations through natural conversation with chat agents that integrate with MCP.
Note: Three MCP servers for Resy reservations already exist in the ecosystem (see Prior Art), but none combine Google Places discovery, weather integration, dining companion tracking, and real booking across both Resy and OpenTable — that gap is this project's value proposition.
What It Does
You: "Book me a quiet Italian place near home for Saturday at 7"
Claude: I found 3 Italian spots within 10 min walk of your home:
1. Carbone (4.7★) - 6:30 PM, 9:15 PM on Resy
2. L'Artusi (4.5★) - 7:00 PM on OpenTable
3. Via Carota (4.6★) - 8:45 PM on Resy
Your wife has a peanut allergy - I've verified these don't
have nut-heavy menus. Which would you like?
You: "L'Artusi at 6:30"
Claude: ✓ Booked! Carbone, Saturday 6:30 PM, 2 people
Confirmation: RESY-ABC123
Add to Google Calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/render?...
Key Features
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Smart Discovery | Google Places ratings + reviews, filtered by your preferences |
| Multi-Platform Booking | Resy (automated), OpenTable (automated) |
| Dietary Awareness | Remembers your restrictions and your dining companions' |
| Group Dining | Save people (with their restrictions) and groups for easy booking |
| Recency Tracking | Won't suggest Mexican if you had it yesterday |
| Weather Aware | No outdoor seating suggestions in winter/rain |
| Visit History | Tracks where you've been, resurfaces favorites |
| Calendar Sync | Add reservations to Google Calendar with one click |
| Cost Tracking | Monitor your API usage costs |
| Resilient | Retry with backoff, circuit breakers, graceful fallbacks |
| Remote Hosting | Docker + Cloudflare Tunnel for access from any device over HTTPS |
Quick Start
1. Prerequisites
- Python 3.11+
- Claude Desktop installed
- Google Cloud API key (Places API enabled)
2. Clone & Install
git clone <repo>
cd restaurant-mcp
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"
playwright install chromium
3. Run Setup
The interactive setup encrypts all secrets into the local database and generates your Claude Desktop config:
source .venv/bin/activate
python -m src.setup
You will be prompted for:
- Google API Key (required) — Google Cloud Console → Places API (New)
- OpenWeather API Key (optional) — openweathermap.org (free tier: 1000/day)
- Resy credentials (optional) — for automated Resy booking
- OpenTable session (optional) — CSRF token + browser cookies for OpenTable booking
The script outputs a ready-to-paste Claude Desktop config with a single RESTAURANT_MCP_KEY env var.
Extracting OpenTable Session Values
OpenTable's API requires authenticated browser session cookies to bypass bot protection. Without this step, OpenTable availability checks and bookings will fail.
During python -m src.setup, when you provide an OpenTable email you'll be prompted for:
- OpenTable x-csrf-token — from browser DevTools
- OpenTable Cookie header — from browser DevTools
How to get these values (re-run setup when cookies expire, typically every few days):
- Open https://www.opentable.com in Chrome and log in
- Open DevTools (
Cmd+Option+Ion macOS,F12on Windows) - Go to the Network tab
- Navigate to any restaurant page (e.g. search for "Carbone" and click it)
- In the Network list, click any request to
www.opentable.com - Find any request to a
/dapi/endpoint (POST) and copy thex-csrf-tokenheader value - In the Headers tab, copy the full
Cookieheader value - Save the cookie value into a temp file that can be referenced in the
src.setupcommand. This is due to the paste size being too large.
Why is this needed? OpenTable uses Cloudflare bot protection that blocks plain HTTP requests. By storing your browser's session cookies, the MCP server can make API calls as your authenticated session. The cookies are encrypted at rest using the same Fernet encryption as all other credentials.
4. Configure Claude Desktop
Copy the JSON output from step 3 into your Claude Desktop MCP config file:
- macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json - Windows:
%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
The config should look like:
{
"mcpServers": {
"restaurant": {
"command": "/path/to/restaurant-mcp/.venv/bin/python",
"args": ["-m", "src"],
"cwd": "/path/to/restaurant-mcp",
"env": {
"RESTAURANT_MCP_KEY": "your-generated-master-key"
}
}
}
}
Replace paths with the act
Tools (3)
discover_restaurantsSearch for restaurants using Google Places data filtered by preferences and location.check_availabilityCheck real-time availability for a restaurant on Resy or OpenTable.book_reservationBook a reservation at a restaurant via Resy or OpenTable.Environment Variables
RESTAURANT_MCP_KEYrequiredMaster key generated by the setup script for encrypted credentials.Configuration
{"mcpServers": {"restaurant": {"command": "/path/to/restaurant-mcp/.venv/bin/python", "args": ["-m", "src"], "cwd": "/path/to/restaurant-mcp", "env": {"RESTAURANT_MCP_KEY": "your-generated-master-key"}}}}