Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 61,530,416 checks across 284 restaurants through 19 October 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
Indian, among cuisines with five or more rooms we track in the city: Indian 11%, Italian 20% and American 30% are the three hardest. Modern Indian is the one that surprises people: the six New York Indian rooms we watch average 11%, and room by room they read Bungalow (0%), Semma (0%), The Ambassadors Clubhouse (0%), ADDA (7%), Dhamaka (23%) and Musaafer (33%).
Across all four cities, among cuisines with five or more tracked rooms, the easiest are Thai 72%, Mediterranean 70% and New American 70%. The hardest are Chinese 14%, Indian 34% and Contemporary 35%.
Italian restaurants we track in New York average 20% availability across twelve rooms against 64% across six in San Francisco, a 44-point gap on the same cuisine measured the same way. In New York Carbone, Don Angie, I Sodi, Torrisi, Una Pizza Napoletana and Via Carota read 0%, while Delfina in San Francisco is at 100%.
The New York restaurants we track average 36% of dates open across 84 rooms, against 60% across 60 rooms in San Francisco. Inside individual cuisines, American runs 30% in New York against 55% in San Francisco, and Japanese 51% against 70%.
Less than you would think. Across the 55 starred rooms we track, the average share of dates open by star count, lowest first, is 2-star 37%, 3-star 41% and 1-star 52%. Per Se, a three-star, reads 40%, while the one-star Semma reads 0%. Format, city and demand predict difficulty far better than the star count does.
No, and it would be absurd to read it that way. We track hard-to-book restaurants rather than a representative sample of the city, so this describes a specific set of rooms that critical attention has landed on, not the availability of a cuisine across hundreds of restaurants. Copra in San Francisco, in the same broad category, sits at 93%.
38 of the 283 rooms we currently hold availability data for had every table for two taken. A 0% reading does not mean the restaurant never seats anyone. It means a table almost never stays open long enough for an ordinary person to find it and take it, which is why those rooms are cancellation games rather than release races.
We re-check every restaurant on this list continuously across Resy, OpenTable, Tock and SevenRooms, which adds up to 61,530,416 availability checks across the 284 restaurants we follow in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago. A cuisine figure is the mean of the per-restaurant open shares, each of which is the percentage of dates in the current booking window with a bookable table.
Sorting the New York restaurants we track by cuisine, and keeping only cuisines with five or more rooms so one restaurant cannot swing the result, the average share of dates with a bookable table runs from hardest to easiest: Indian 11%, Italian 20%, American 30%, Korean 32%, French 37% and Japanese 51%. The bottom of that list is not where most people would guess. A visitor who assumes the hardest table in New York is a steak or an omakase counter has the wrong map.
Modern Indian is the category that surprises people most. The six New York Indian rooms we watch average 11%, and three of them had every table for two taken. One by one, from hardest: Bungalow (0%), Semma (0%), The Ambassadors Clubhouse (0%), ADDA (7%), Dhamaka (23%) and Musaafer (33%). The Ambassadors Clubhouse reads 0% after 613,215 checks of its calendar.
We can draw a gradient like this because the list is short on purpose. These numbers come from 61,530,416 availability checks across the 284 restaurants we follow in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago. A directory advertising 62,198 restaurants cannot tell you what its Indian rooms do differently from its steakhouses, because it is not measuring any of them closely enough to compare.
Hardest New York cuisine with five or more rooms: Indian 11%.
New York Indian, room by room: Bungalow (0%), Semma (0%), The Ambassadors Clubhouse (0%), ADDA (7%), Dhamaka (23%) and Musaafer (33%).
New York Indian average: 11%, against 30% for American and 20% for Italian.
Easiest New York cuisines with three or more rooms: Steakhouse 66%, Seafood 63% and Japanese 51%.
Across all four cities, every cuisine with five or more tracked rooms, ranked by average availability from hardest to easiest: Chinese 14%, Indian 34%, Contemporary 35%, Korean 37%, Mexican 47%, Japanese 54%, American 54%, Italian 55%, French 56%, Seafood 65%, Steakhouse 67%, Californian 70%, New American 70%, Mediterranean 70% and Thai 72%.
We leave out cuisines with fewer rooms than that on purpose. With three or four restaurants in a category, a single bookable room moves the average by twenty-five points or more, which is noise rather than a finding. Six rooms all pointing the same way is a pattern; three is a coincidence waiting to be quoted.
A caveat that matters more than the ranking. We do not track a representative sample of any city's restaurants. We track the hard ones. So this is not a claim that any cuisine is scarce, which would be absurd in cities with hundreds of restaurants of every kind. It is a claim about a specific set of rooms that a specific kind of attention has landed on.
What the gradient actually measures is where the current wave of critical and social attention has concentrated. Ten years ago the same exercise would have produced a different hardest cuisine. The number is a snapshot of fashion as much as of capacity, which is exactly why it is worth watching rather than assuming.
Hardest three, all cities: Chinese 14%, Indian 34% and Contemporary 35%.
Easiest three, all cities: Thai 72%, Mediterranean 70% and New American 70%.
Only cuisines with five or more measured rooms are ranked.
38 of the 283 rooms we hold data for had every table for two taken.
This is the clearest same-cuisine comparison in the data. New York Italian averages 20% availability across twelve rooms. San Francisco Italian averages 64% across six. Same cuisine, same method, same weeks, and a 44-point gap.
The New York list is the tightest: six of its rooms read 0%, namely Carbone, Don Angie, I Sodi, Torrisi, Una Pizza Napoletana and Via Carota, with Via Carota at 0%. The San Francisco list runs the other way: Delfina at 100%, Penny Roma at 73%, Cafe Zoetrope at 100% and Flour + Water at 53%.
The exceptions on each side are the instructive part. Lilia at 63% and Forsythia at 70% are New York Italian restaurants that are simply bookable. Cotogna at 20% and Quince at 40% are the San Francisco Italian rooms that hold out longest. The city average tells you the prior, not the answer.
The same comparison runs across other cuisines. American averages 30% in New York against 55% in San Francisco, and Japanese 51% against 70%.
Italian: New York 20% across twelve rooms, San Francisco 64% across six.
American: New York 30%, San Francisco 55%.
Japanese: New York 51%, San Francisco 70%.
Hardest San Francisco Italian rooms: Cotogna (20%) and Quince (40%).
Put every room we track into one pile and the cleanest split is often not the food, it is the city. The New York restaurants average 36% of dates open across 84 rooms and the San Francisco restaurants 60% across 60, a 24-point gap. Los Angeles averages 62% across 72 and Chicago 67% across 67.
That is the single most useful thing on this page for anyone planning a trip: the city you are in sets the prior before the cuisine does. Where the cities converge is at the very top. San Francisco has six rooms of its own that read 0%, among them Enclos (0%) and Fu Hui Hua (0%), exactly like the hardest rooms in New York.
Michelin stars are a weaker signal than people expect. Across the 55 starred rooms we track in all four cities, the average share of dates open by star count, lowest first, is 2-star 37%, 3-star 41% and 1-star 52%. Semma, a one-star, reads 0%, and Per Se, a three-star, reads 40%. Reputation and availability are separate measurements, and only one of them is on the booking page.
New York: 36% average across 84 rooms. San Francisco: 60% across 60 rooms.
Los Angeles: 62% across 72. Chicago: 67% across 67.
Starred rooms by star count, lowest first: 2-star 37%, 3-star 41% and 1-star 52%.
Every city bottoms out the same way, at rooms that show nothing at all.
The variance inside a cuisine is often larger than the gap between cuisines, which is the more useful fact and the reason we publish per-restaurant numbers rather than category scores. Italian in New York runs from Carbone (0%) to Forsythia (70%). Japanese in New York runs from Ramen By Ra (0%) to Shinzo Omakase (100%).
A category average also hides the two things that actually decide whether you get a table: which night and which hour. Cote reads 0% of dates open and puts 0% of the 296,926 open slots we have sampled between 7:00 and 8:30 PM. Le Bernardin reads 61% and puts 1% of its openings at prime time, with 10:30 PM as its most frequent slot. Umeko reads 47% and 92% of what it opens is before 6 PM. Each is more available than its reputation and less available than its percentage, at the hour most people want.
Then there is party size, which can move the answer further than cuisine does at the top of the market. Quince reads 40% for a two-top and 40% for a four-top, Cote 0% and 93%, and Musaafer 33% and 43%. Two people on a Saturday at 8 PM is the single most contested request in any of these cities, and none of those words is the cuisine.
Same cuisine, same city: Torrisi 0% and Forsythia 70%.
Cote: 0% of dates open, 0% of 296,926 sampled slots at prime time.
Le Bernardin: 61% open, 1% of slots at prime time, most often 10:30 PM.
Quince: 40% for a two-top against 40% for a four-top.
As a prior, not a rule. If you want a cuisine near the bottom of the gradient in New York on a specific night, start earlier than you would for anything else and expect to work for it. If you want one near the top, the odds are already with you and you are probably overthinking it.
Deciding on a cuisine first and then hunting for it is a harder game than looking at what is actually open and choosing from that. The gradient on this page is most valuable read backwards: it tells you which categories reward flexibility, and where being willing to eat at 5:30 PM, on a Tuesday, as a party of four, converts a fight into a booking.
And if the specific room is the point, the cuisine average is irrelevant. Look up that restaurant, find its release rule, and set an alert for the dates you want. We watch 284 restaurants across Resy, OpenTable, Tock and SevenRooms and text or email you the moment a table opens. We never book it, hold it or resell it: you book it yourself, in your own name, on the restaurant's own platform, which is the line between an alert and a broker.
Treat the cuisine average as a prior and the restaurant's own numbers as the answer.
The most flexible levers, in order of power: the night, the hour, and the party size.
For a fully booked room, be ready at the release and set an alert for the cancellations after it.
For a room above 50%, stop researching and book it.
Keep reading: Hardest Indian reservations in NYC · Hardest Korean reservations in NYC · How to get an omakase reservation · Why a Michelin star does not predict difficulty · The hardest neighbourhood to book · The easiest night to get a table
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