Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 61,530,416 checks across 284 restaurants through 19 October 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
On our 19 October 2026 reading, from the hard end: Fu Hui Hua (0%), Z & Y (0%), Four Kings (20%) and Mister Jiu's (50%). Z & Y's reading is a policy rather than demand: its own reservations page limits advance bookings to parties of four or more, and four-tops were open on 77% of dates. The most available of the group is Mister Jiu's (50%).
Because Z & Y limits advance reservations to parties of four or more, according to its own reservations page, and asks for at least one day's notice. Our record matches: 0 open two-tops across 170,513 date checks, alongside four-tops open on 23 of the 30 dates we track. If you are two people, a walk-in or a larger group is the real answer.
Book on Tock, which is the only place it takes advance reservations: the restaurant opens tables 30 days ahead at 10 AM Pacific, one new date each morning, with a refundable deposit. It is closed on Sundays and Mondays. If the night you want is gone, the bar takes walk-ins from 5 PM, and an alert catches a cancellation when one comes back on Tock.
Ask for a Sunday and take a late seat. Four Kings opens 21 days ahead at noon on OpenTable. Sunday runs at 19% against 7% on Friday, and Monday through Wednesday have returned almost nothing. Of 58,747 open slots we have logged, 99% are 9:00 PM or later and 9:45 PM is the most common.
Late, almost exclusively. Across 58,747 recorded open slots, 99% are at nine or later and 9:45 PM is the most common. Only 1% falls between 7:00 and 8:30 PM, and nothing earlier than 5:45 PM has ever appeared. A late seat is not a consolation prize here, it is the reservation.
Watch Tock rather than refreshing it. Our Tock figures for Fu Hui Hua were reset on 17 October 2026 after a measurement fix showed the earlier readings ran high, and the new record is still rebuilding. It opens the week before at 10 AM.
By open share, Mister Jiu's (50%). For a group of four, Z & Y at 77% of dates is the most open table on this list. For a normal dinner hour, Four Kings puts 1% of its recorded open slots between 7:00 and 8:30 PM.
It depends entirely on the room. Z & Y opened on 0% of dates for two and 77% for four. Four Kings opened on 20% for two and 10% for four. Fu Hui Hua reads 0% and 0%, on Tock figures reset on 17 October 2026 after a measurement fix and still rebuilding.
Z & Y and Four Kings book on OpenTable, and Fu Hui Hua and Mister Jiu's on Tock, so no single app shows you the category. SnagRes tracks all of them together, which matters most for Fu Hui Hua, whose short Tock window advances on no dependable clock.
By re-checking the same calendars around the clock on OpenTable and Tock. Open share is the percentage of dates in the current booking window with at least one bookable table for two, dated 19 October 2026. The check counts are cumulative, and the wider study behind these pages covers 61,530,416 availability checks across 284 tracked restaurants.
No. SnagRes watches these calendars and tells you the moment a table opens, by email or text, and you book it yourself in your own account at the restaurant's own price. We never hold or resell a reservation. Services that charge per successful booking or resell tables outright are the practice New York's 2024 reservation law was written about, and an alert sits on the other side of that line.
On our 19 October 2026 reading, the San Francisco Chinese rooms we measure run, from the hard end: Fu Hui Hua (0%), Z & Y (0%), Four Kings (20%) and Mister Jiu's (50%), the share of dates in the current window with a bookable table for two. Z & Y in Chinatown needs the most explaining: across 170,513 date checks we have recorded 0 bookable tables for two there, 0 of the 30 dates in the window we track.
Open share here means one specific thing: the percentage of dates in the current booking window with at least one table for two you could have reserved. A lower number is a harder room. What it does not tell you is why a room is closed to you, and at Z & Y the reason turns out not to be demand at all, which is the sort of thing a ranking on its own will always get wrong.
These are measured figures rather than repeated ones. SnagRes re-checks all four calendars around the clock on OpenTable and Tock, and the study behind these pages now covers 61,530,416 availability checks across 284 tracked restaurants. The percentages are a point-in-time reading of the current window, dated 19 October 2026. The check counts are cumulative and only grow.
Here is each room, with the platform, the sample behind each figure and how a party of four fares against a party of two. Mister Jiu's, which moved its bookings to Tock, is described by its published rule while its Tock readings build up.
Z & Y (Chinatown, OpenTable): 0% of dates open for two, but 77% for four, which is 23 dates. 170,513 date checks, with 539 release events observed across 56 days.
Fu Hui Hua (Mission, Tock): 0% for two and 0% for four. 1,206 date checks. Opens the week before at 10 AM.
Four Kings (Chinatown, OpenTable): 20% for two and 10% for four. 275,471 date checks. Opens 21 days ahead at noon.
Mister Jiu's (Chinatown, Tock): opens 30 days ahead at 10 AM Pacific, on a rolling basis, with a refundable deposit, and the bar takes walk-ins. Measured figures are being collected on its Tock calendar.
Three of the four are inside a few blocks of each other in Chinatown, and they behave nothing alike. Same neighbourhood, same cuisine, different booking problems.
Because it is a policy, not a scramble. Z & Y's own reservations page limits advance bookings to parties of four or more, and asks that they be made at least one day ahead. Our numbers are what that rule looks like from the outside: 0 bookable two-tops in 170,513 date checks, and a four-top available on 23 of the 30 dates we track. A ranking that only measures two-tops puts Z & Y at the top of the difficulty list, and a diner reading that ranking draws exactly the wrong conclusion.
The measurement makes the shape unmistakable. Z & Y reads 0% for two on a Saturday and 0% on a Tuesday, on per-night samples of thousands of checks, with no lucky mornings. That flatness is the signature of a rule rather than of demand. A room that is merely popular leaks a table occasionally, usually on its quietest night, and produces a lopsided week. Z & Y produces a straight line.
Because no two-top ever opens there, we have no open slot times to report for a party of two, which is why this page carries no evening breakdown for Z & Y. When a restaurant releases nothing at a given party size, there is no hour to be scarce at. For four, though, the calendar is one of the more open ones on this list.
So the practical advice for Z & Y is short and unusual: bring four people, book at least a day ahead, and stop treating it as a hard table. If you are two, the reservation you are looking for does not exist to be won, and a walk-in or a larger group is the actual answer.
Two-tops: 0 bookable in 170,513 date checks.
Four-tops: 77% of dates open, which is 23 of the 30 we track.
The restaurant's own reservations page restricts advance reservations to parties of four or more and asks for at least one day's notice.
Release record: 539 events observed across 56 days on which the OpenTable window advanced.
Four Kings opens on 20% of dates, and almost everything it opens is at nine o'clock or later. Of 58,747 recorded open slots there, 99% fall at 9:00 PM or after, and the most common single time is 9:45 PM. Nothing in our record is earlier than 5:45 PM, and only 1% of the total lands in the prime 7:00 to 8:30 PM window.
The week is just as lopsided. Sunday is its most generous night at 7,528 of 40,010 checks, or 19%, and Friday its thinnest open night at 7%. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday returned 0, 0 and 0 tables for two, which reads as a closure rather than as extreme demand.
Party size can run the opposite way here from Z & Y. Four Kings reads 20% for two and 10% for four. If you are a group of four looking at Chinatown, Z & Y is the room built to seat you, which is precisely the inverse of what the headline ranking implies.
Four Kings opens 21 days ahead at noon on OpenTable, and we have logged 226 release events there across 57 days. So a Sunday at 9:45 PM, taken at the drop and checked again later in the day, is the most gettable version of this table by a wide margin.
99% of open slots are 9:00 PM or later. 9:45 PM is the most common single time.
Prime 7:00 to 8:30 PM: 1% of open slots. Earliest time ever seen: 5:45 PM.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday: 0, 0 and 0 bookable two-tops.
Opens 21 days ahead at noon, with 226 release events observed.
Sunday at Four Kings, while the Fu Hui Hua Tock record is rebuilding. Every figure below is cumulative across all the checks we have run at that restaurant, and the spread inside a single room is usually wider than the spread between rooms.
Mister Jiu's publishes its week rather than leaving it to be measured: it serves Tuesday to Saturday and is closed on Sundays and Mondays, according to its own reservations page, so a Sunday or Monday date is a closed night, not a sold-out one.
Our Tock figures for Fu Hui Hua were reset on 17 October 2026 after a measurement fix showed the earlier readings ran high, and the new record is still rebuilding. We do not rank its nights until the new record shows a pattern; its 10:00 AM Tock release is the dependable route meanwhile.
Four Kings peaks on Sunday at 19%, and Friday at 7% is the night to skip among those it opens. Across the rooms we measure the pattern holds: the night most people ask for is rarely the night the calendar is willing to give, and knowing which night each room actually leaks is the whole advantage.
Mister Jiu's: open Tuesday to Saturday, closed Sunday and Monday, per its own reservations page.
Four Kings: Sunday 19%, Saturday 14%, Friday 7%.
Z & Y: 0 two-tops on any night, the only flat week on this page.
Late at Four Kings. This is where the rooms separate most sharply, and it is the part of the answer that no coverage-first directory can give you, because it takes enormous numbers of individual slot sightings at one restaurant to see it.
Fu Hui Hua is the smallest and strangest calendar on this page. Time-of-day figures for Fu Hui Hua are being re-measured after a change in how we read Tock, and return here once the sample is large enough.
Mister Jiu's will join this comparison once its Tock calendar has enough recorded open slots to mean something. Until then, its own hours are the guide: dinner from 5 PM, to 9 PM midweek and 9:30 PM on Fridays and Saturdays.
Four Kings is the mirror image at 1% prime and 99% late. Neither room is better than the other in the abstract. They are answers to different questions, and the useful thing is knowing which question you are asking before you start setting alarms.
Share of open slots between 7:00 and 8:30 PM: Four Kings 1%.
Most frequently open time: Four Kings 9:45 PM.
Share of open slots at 9:00 PM or later: Four Kings 99%.
Latest time offered: Four Kings 10:00 PM.
Match the method to the room, because all four need a different one. Z & Y needs a party of four and a day's notice. Four Kings needs a Sunday and a late seat. Fu Hui Hua needs its Tock release and a watch. Mister Jiu's needs the 10 AM release and, failing that, the bar.
Where there is a clock, show up early and logged in. Mister Jiu's opens 30 days ahead at 10 AM Pacific on Tock, by its own published rule, with a refundable deposit at booking. Four Kings opens 21 days ahead at noon on OpenTable. Set the alarm for the published hour if you want one specific date, and look again later, because returned tables keep arriving.
Fu Hui Hua is the one you cannot easily time. It opens the week before at 10 AM on Tock. For a room like that, a watch is not a convenience, it is the method that works, because the alternative is refreshing Tock for a week.
After any drop, what a real diner catches is a table someone else gave back. Cancellations do not arrive on a schedule. They surface at random hours as plans change and parties shrink, and each freed seat is gone again within minutes. SnagRes watches all four of these calendars continuously and emails or texts you the moment a table opens. We tell you about the table. We do not book it, hold it, or resell it. You book it yourself, in your own account, at the restaurant's own price, which is worth stating plainly in a category where some services charge a fee for every reservation they secure and others resell tables outright. New York's 2024 reservation law was written about that practice, and an alert sits on the other side of that line.
Z & Y: book four or more, at least one day ahead, on OpenTable. Two-tops are not on the board at all.
Four Kings: 21 days ahead at noon, OpenTable. Ask for Sunday and take 9:45 PM.
Fu Hui Hua: the week before at 10 AM, Tock.
Mister Jiu's: 30 days ahead at 10 AM Pacific, Tock. If the night is gone, the bar takes walk-ins from 5 PM.
Widen the hour before you widen the date at Four Kings, where 99% of openings are 9:00 PM or later.
Every number on this page is a count of something we watched happen. The 170,513 date checks behind Z & Y's flat line, the 58,747 slot sightings behind Four Kings at 99% late, and the 226 release events we caught there are all observations of live calendars, not details lifted from a listing. Where a figure comes from a restaurant instead, as with the published release times and Z & Y's party-size rule, it is taken from that restaurant's own reservations page and labelled as published rather than measured.
That is only possible because the list is short. SnagRes tracks 284 restaurants, 84 of them in New York and 60 in San Francisco, and the 283 with a measured record carry 61,530,416 logged availability checks between them. A service advertising tens of thousands of restaurants is describing a directory. It cannot tell you that Z & Y is 0% for two and 77% for four, or which night Fu Hui Hua actually opens, because nothing is watching those two rooms closely enough to know.
So we will say the unhelpful thing plainly. San Francisco's Chinese category is four restaurants on our list. Chinatown alone holds many more, and if the room you want is not one of these, a broader service is the better fit and we are not going to pretend otherwise. If it is one of these, this is the closest thing that exists to a record of what those calendars really do.
The same measurements exist for the rest of the city. San Francisco's Japanese list is the one to read next if the late-table problem at Four Kings sounds familiar, because one counter there has offered a single seating time across 174 sightings. The SF French list makes the opposite point, with rooms running from Verjus (10%) to Jou Jou (77%).
Keep reading: The hardest Japanese tables in SF · The hardest French tables in SF · How to get a Mister Jiu's reservation · How to get a Four Kings reservation · The hardest reservations in SF · Restaurants you can actually book · Resy vs OpenTable vs Tock vs SevenRooms
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SnagRes checks 284 hard-to-book restaurants across four cities and alerts you when one opens. Watching one is free and no card is needed: watch a table free in San Francisco, or last-minute tables in SF tonight, or see the hardest tables right now.