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Fans of 'Culinary Class Wars' crash reservation app for 'Napoli Matfia' restaurant

Published: 10 Oct. 2024, 15:45 Updated: 10 Oct. 2024, 19:32

Netflix's hit cooking show "Culinary Class Wars" winner Napoli Matfia, left, and runner-up Edward Lee [NAPOLI MATFIA'S INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT]

Fans of Netflix's hit show "Culinary Class Wars" have temporarily crashed the popular reservation application "CatchTable" as they rush to book a table at the winner's restaurant.

Over 110,000 users jammed the platform to secure a table at Matfia's Via Toledo Pasta Bar in Yongsan District, central Seoul, causing a 20-minute outage on Thursday morning when reservations opened at 10 a.m., according to the platform.

The unprecedented traffic on the social media platform overwhelmed the system, causing sign-in failures and various technical glitches. As of 12 p.m. Thursday, all the seats available for October are booked, and the waitlists have also reached their capacity of 100.

Napoli Matfia, the winner of the show, expressed his surprise at the overwhelming response and apologized for the inconvenience caused by the outage through a post on Instagram Thursday.

"I feel so sorry for the users. I will look for ways to resolve the issue such as expanding available seats." he said.

The show also impacted other competing chefs of "Culinary Class Wars." The weekly average reservation rate for the chefs' restaurants went up by 148 percent last week according to the reservation platform's trend report released on Monday, and local retailers are also quickly rolling out product items created during the show.

The reservation page for Napoli Matfia's Via Toledo Pasta Bar on the CatchTable application shows that all seats are booked for October. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

BY YOON SEUNG-JIN [[email protected]]