I got the bonkers idea last week to try reserving a table at Legacy Records, a brand-new “coastal Italian” brasserie from the Charlie Bird/Pasquale Jones team on the far, far West Side. I fed requests for several different dates into their website.

Silly me! The screen replied, “There are no tables available [for any date in for the foreseeable lifetime] for 4 people.” But it mirthfully added, “In better news, a table for 4 people is available today.”

Thanks! Today happened to be the day of the nor’easter when 8 inches of snow were falling. Yet I’m sure some frenzied foodies managed to get there on skis — or in their limos.

The impossibility of getting into “hot” new restaurants such as Legacy Records is old hat to grumpy foodies crowded out by get-there-first scenesters — who might not care an artisanal fig about the cuisine.

A superheated dining scene isn’t new. But since the recent rise of online “heat” and power listings, no earlier era — not even the pre-crash, junk-bonds party of the 1980s — can touch today’s feeding frenzy that’s less about seeing what a chef can do than about ticking off every box on a “hot” list.

Bombay Bread, check! Simon and the Whale, check!

Russ & Daughters Cafe, check! — even if devotees often must line up on the sidewalk. Black Tap burger, check! — where the line is not for deservedly famous Jewish deli delights, but for sickly sweet, $15 milk shakes.

It’s a wonder nobody’s done a “Table Tantrum” reality show set in the Big Apple: Can Nick and Sophie beat Josh and Emma to Ugly Baby in Carroll Gardens?

Turkish chef Nusr-Et’s salt-spewing, Instagram stardom made his self-named Midtown steakhouse a “must” for those who can’t face their friends without selfies they took there. To some people, a lousy iceberg lettuce salad’s $25 tab is a bargain to avoid friends sneering, “You haven’t been? Loser!”

Our entire dining scene now resembles a five-borough Rao’s, beyond reach of those without pull, infinite patience or the wherewithal to “buy a table” at new restaurants — and even some older ones.

Take Legacy Records (named for a former recording studio). Why the insane demand for a place on a remote, auto-congested block close to the Lincoln Tunnel mouth? In February, Eater.com called it the “not-yet-open, but somehow-already-hot Mediterranean restaurant.” One reason for the mysterious “somehow” is Eater.com itself, which followed the joint’s every driven nail over the past year.

So did GrubStreet.com and fancy magazines including Vogue. I’m guilty, too — my Post colleague Hailey Eber and I put Legacy Records on our list of 2018’s most-anticipated new places.

People are suckers for lists, and the impetus to check out restaurants on “heat” and “power” rosters before the crowd moves on drives dining habits more than reviews or traditional word-of-mouth. Publicists now spend more time wooing blog editors hoping they will include their clients on the lists than they do promoting chefs. (“It takes the joy out of the job for me,” a publicist friend who didn’t dare being named told me.) Restaurants, meanwhile, play hard-to-get for ordinary customers, knowing they’ll put up with anything to say, “Been there, ate that.”

I’m amused and appalled by the dehumanizing struggles my friends face to book tables at restaurant-flavors-of-the-month.

The speed-dial torture of the past now seems quaint since Momofuku Ko pioneered the online booking jungle in 2008. You need lightning-fast reflexes to click on a table before hordes of other trend-followers — and you still might have to eat at 5:30 or 11 p.m.

I occasionally pull strings to get access when I’m writing a feature (not a review) on short notice, such as at Tetsu last fall. But I most often brave the real world.

No tables for four were open before 9:30 p.m. for weeks ahead at Cote, a hot-button, concrete-shell Korean steakhouse louder than the Columbus Circle IRT station when four trains roar through at once.

The Lobster Club on East 53rd Street, like other Major Food Group places such as Carbone and Dirty French, has a phone number — but it’s useless. A woman’s snooty, recorded British accent advises that we’ve reached the “corporate offices” and directs us to email lobsterclub.com.

The outcome? Nothing available before 10:15 p.m. on the night I requested. The site displays no calendar to tell us which nights are sold out, so every time a request bounces back you must start over. If you by some chance succeed, you must give them a credit card number.

Gem, teen chef Flynn McGarry’s bistro at 116 Forsyth St., ups the obnoxious ante by requiring not merely a credit card number to hold the table but full prepayment of $155 a head — which doesn’t include liquor that’s tagged on later.

Heightened culinary awareness is partly to blame. The Food Network made cooking a spectator sport and elevated chefs to rock-star fame.

Another factor is that more affluent customers are chasing a finite number of seats. According to the US Census, Manhattan grew by more than 150,000 residents since 1990 to a projected 1.68 million in 2020. But that doesn’t begin to tell the story. As gentrification swept the island, legions of better-off people who live to boast of their dining adventures replaced poorer residents.

So lots of luck beating your friends to Legacy Records — or any place where getting there first matters more than going home happy.

Steve Cuozzo is The Post’s restaurant critic