Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 66,314,725 checks across 285 restaurants through October 22, 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
On our October 22, 2026 reading, from the hard end: Verjus (13%), RT Bistro (70%) and Jou Jou (77%), the share of dates in the window with a bookable table for two. Verjus's reading comes from 272,704 date checks. Its best night of the week, Saturday at 22%, compares with RT Bistro's worst, Tuesday at 53%.
Ask for a Saturday, take an afternoon or late seat, and let something watch SevenRooms for you. Saturday runs at 22% against Friday's 11%, and Sunday and Monday returned 0 and 0 two-tops. Of 200,724 open slots recorded there, 65% are before 6:00 PM and 8% fall between 7:00 and 8:30 PM.
Three reasons stack up. It opens 7 days ahead at midnight, so only about a week of dates exists at any moment and a week of demand lands in one moment when the window rolls over. It rarely if ever opens a two-top on a Sunday or a Monday, which cuts the week to five nights. And it books on SevenRooms, where a returned table reappears quietly rather than loudly, so openings pass unnoticed.
The most open, from the top: Jou Jou (77%) and RT Bistro (70%). RT Bistro's worst night is Tuesday at 53%. Jou Jou returned 0 Monday openings in 1,041 checks and reads 99% on Thursdays.
Compare the prime-time shares: RT Bistro puts 29% of its open slots between 7:00 and 8:30 PM, most often at 10:00 PM. Jou Jou puts 38% there, most often at 8:30 PM. Verjus puts 8% of its openings in that window, so a prime-hour table there is a much smaller ask than its 13% headline already suggests.
Not by much. Verjus reads 13% for two and 17% for four, Jou Jou 77% and 80%, RT Bistro 70% and 70%. Party size is a bigger lever in New York, where Minetta Tavern runs 55% for two and 74% for four.
All three use a different one. Verjus books on SevenRooms, Jou Jou on Tock and RT Bistro on OpenTable, so no single app shows you the category. SnagRes tracks all three, which matters most for SevenRooms, where a returned Verjus table reappears without any announcement and is gone within minutes.
Verjus's own reservations page puts the release 7 days ahead at midnight, on SevenRooms. We have logged 131 release events there across 60 days on which the window advanced. Because the calendar is so short, a new date appears about a week before the night itself, and the furthest bookable date we have seen was 7 days out.
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.
By re-checking the same calendars around the clock on SevenRooms, Tock and OpenTable. Open share is the percentage of dates in the current booking window with at least one bookable table for two, dated October 22, 2026. The samples run to 272,704, 6,840 and 272,370 date checks, and the wider study behind these pages covers 66,314,725 availability checks across 285 tracked restaurants.
On our October 22, 2026 reading, the hardest French reservation in San Francisco is Verjus (13%), the share of dates in the window we track with a bookable table for two. Verjus in Jackson Square showed 4 open dates, against 77% at Jou Jou in the Marina and 70% at RT Bistro in the Mission. That reading rests on 272,704 date checks at Verjus alone.
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. It is not a measure of how full the dining room is, because a restaurant can be busy every night and still leave a calendar you can book from.
These are measured figures rather than repeated ones. SnagRes re-checks all three calendars around the clock on SevenRooms, Tock and OpenTable, and the study behind these pages now covers 66,314,725 availability checks across 285 tracked restaurants. The percentages are a point-in-time reading of the current window, dated October 22, 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.
Verjus (Jackson Square, SevenRooms): 13% of dates open for two and 17% for four. 272,704 date checks. It opens 7 days ahead at midnight, so only about a week of dates exists at any moment.
Jou Jou (Marina, Tock): 77% for two and 80% for four. 6,840 date checks. It opens 30 days ahead at 10 AM, per its own site.
RT Bistro (Mission, OpenTable): 70% for two and 70% for four. 272,370 date checks. It opens 42 days ahead at midnight.
Verjus's most generous night of the week, Saturday at 22%, against RT Bistro's tightest, Tuesday at 53%.
Between them the three rooms have produced 162,491, 2,600,685 and 200,724 individual sightings of an open slot, which is what lets us say which hour of the evening each one actually sells.
Three things stack on top of each other, and the window is the biggest of them. Verjus opens 7 days ahead at midnight, and the furthest bookable date we recorded was 7 days ahead. A 30-day calendar spreads demand across a month of nights. A one-week calendar funnels a week of pent-up demand into a single moment each night the window rolls forward. We have logged 131 release events at Verjus across 60 days on which that happened, so the pattern is measured rather than assumed.
The second thing is the week itself. Across 272,704 date checks, Verjus has opened 0 two-tops on a Sunday in 39,116 checks and 0 on a Monday in 39,263. That removes two of the seven nights before you start. Friday, the night most people ask for, runs at 4,132 of 38,644 checks, or 11%.
The third is the platform. Verjus books on SevenRooms, which does not surface openings the way Resy and OpenTable do, so a returned table can appear and vanish without anyone noticing it was there. Jou Jou on Tock and RT Bistro on OpenTable sit on platforms diners already refresh out of habit, and both of them open on most dates anyway.
None of that makes Verjus impossible. It makes it a catch-it-when-it-appears table rather than a plan-it-in-advance one, and the difference matters because the two situations call for completely different behaviour.
Release rule: Verjus 7 days ahead at midnight, Jou Jou 30 days ahead at 10 AM, RT Bistro 42 days ahead at midnight.
Release events we have observed: Verjus 131 across 60 days, RT Bistro 59 across 54, Jou Jou 4 across 4.
Monday openings for two: Verjus 0, Jou Jou 0, RT Bistro 28,034.
Friday: Verjus 11%, Jou Jou 99%, RT Bistro 99%.
Platform: Verjus on SevenRooms, Jou Jou on Tock, RT Bistro on OpenTable. One watch has to cover all three.
Saturday at Verjus, Friday at Jou Jou, and Sunday at RT Bistro. Every figure below is cumulative across all the checks we have run at that restaurant, not a reading of this week, and the spread within a single room is often wider than the spread between rooms.
Verjus is the interesting one because its week does not follow the usual shape. Saturday, normally the hardest night anywhere, reads 22% there, on 8,613 of 38,869 Saturday checks, against Friday at 11%. So the received wisdom about weekends is a poor guide here.
Jou Jou has one hard stop and one soft spot. Monday returned 0 openings in 1,041 checks. Tuesday reads 72% against Friday at 99%. If a Marina bistro on a Tuesday is what you want, that is the one night at Jou Jou worth planning rather than assuming.
RT Bistro's floor is high. Its hardest night is Tuesday at 20,788 of 39,131 checks, or 53%, and Sunday sits at 100%. For a group that just wants a French dinner in the Mission this week, this is the table to book and stop thinking about.
Verjus: Tuesday 18%, Wednesday 20%, Thursday 14%, Friday 11%, Saturday 22%.
Jou Jou: Tuesday 72%, Wednesday 95%, Thursday 99%, Friday 99%, Saturday 98%, Sunday 99%.
RT Bistro: Sunday 100%, Monday 71%, Tuesday 53%, Wednesday 86%, Thursday 87%, Friday 99%, Saturday 99%.
Best single move at Verjus: ask for Saturday rather than Friday.
Best single move at Jou Jou: avoid Tuesday.
At Verjus, mostly the afternoon. Of 200,724 open slots we have recorded there, 65% are before 6:00 PM, the earliest time it offers is 11:30 AM, and 8% of everything that opens falls in the prime 7:00 to 8:30 PM window. Verjus behaves in our data like the wine bar it is: an afternoon and late room with a scarce dinner hour in the middle. Its single most frequently open time is 4:00 PM, and the latest it offers is 9:30 PM.
That is the fact that turns a hard restaurant into something you can actually plan. If an afternoon glass or a late table is acceptable, you are competing for most of what Verjus releases. If you want 7:30 PM on a Friday, you are asking for a sliver of the inventory on one of the restaurant's worst nights, and you should expect to wait for a cancellation rather than a release.
The other two sell more of the hour most people want. RT Bistro puts 29% of its open slots between 7:00 and 8:30 PM, and its most frequently open time is 10:00 PM. Jou Jou puts 38% there, with 8:30 PM the single most common.
So the honest summary is that San Francisco's French category has one genuinely scarce table and two that will usually seat you if you ask. That is a more useful thing to know than a difficulty ranking on its own, because it tells you which of the three you should actually be pointing at.
Share of open slots between 7:00 and 8:30 PM: RT Bistro 29%, Jou Jou 38%, Verjus 8%.
Most frequently open time: Verjus 4:00 PM, RT Bistro 10:00 PM, Jou Jou 8:30 PM.
Share of open slots before 6:00 PM: Verjus 65%, Jou Jou 25%, RT Bistro 19%.
Share at 9:00 PM or later: Verjus 22%, RT Bistro 37%, Jou Jou 11%.
Earliest and latest times offered: Verjus 11:30 AM to 9:30 PM, Jou Jou 5:00 PM to 9:15 PM, RT Bistro 4:45 PM to 10:00 PM.
Compare the two readings before you decide. Verjus opened on 13% of dates for two and 17% for four, Jou Jou on 77% and 80%, RT Bistro on 70% and 70%. Party size moves the San Francisco French rooms far less than it moves many rooms elsewhere.
In New York, the same measurement moves a long way. Minetta Tavern opens on 55% of dates for two and 74% for four. Chez Fifi goes from 47% to 63%. When a room releases inventory in one burst and the first minute is a scramble, the tables left standing are the ones fewest people asked for, and most people are asking for a two-top. Bridges runs the other way, at 63% for two and 40% for four.
The reason San Francisco's three stay close is almost certainly that two of them are open most of the time in the first place, so there is little scarcity for party size to sort. At Verjus, do not read a four-top figure as plentiful. Read it as four-tops being about as scarce as everything else.
Verjus: 13% for two, 17% for four.
Jou Jou: 77% for two, 80% for four.
RT Bistro: 70% for two, 70% for four.
Decide which of the three problems you are solving, because only one of them needs a strategy. A Saturday at Verjus, taken in the afternoon or late, is the most gettable version of the hardest French table in the city. A weeknight at Jou Jou or RT Bistro is a matter of opening the app and picking a night, and pretending otherwise would be selling you something you do not need.
For Verjus, the release is worth showing up for but it is not the main event. Its own reservations page puts the release 7 days ahead at midnight, an hour almost nobody is watching by hand. Jou Jou opens 30 days ahead at 10 AM on Tock. RT Bistro opens 42 days ahead at midnight on OpenTable, and with 70% of dates already open there is rarely anything to wait for.
After the drop, what a real diner catches at Verjus 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 on SevenRooms they reappear quietly, as a bookable seat rather than an announcement. With a window only about a week deep, a returned table is gone in minutes, and nobody can refresh a SevenRooms page every few minutes for a week straight.
SnagRes watches all three of these calendars continuously and emails or texts you the moment a table opens, including the quiet returns. 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.
Verjus: 7 days ahead at midnight, SevenRooms, per its own page. Ask for Saturday, and take an afternoon or late seat.
Jou Jou: 30 days ahead at 10 AM, Tock, per its own site. Avoid Monday, and Tuesday is the weak spot at 72%.
RT Bistro: 42 days ahead at midnight, OpenTable. Book it. Only Tuesday, at 53%, asks for any thought.
Set the watch on Verjus rather than on the other two, since it is the one where an alert changes the outcome.
Widen the hour before you widen the date. At Verjus the hour is worth more than the night, since 65% of openings are before 6:00 PM.
Every number on this page is a count of something we watched happen. The 272,704 date checks behind Verjus at 13%, the 200,724 slot sightings behind its afternoon-heavy hours, and the 131 release events we caught there are all observations of the live calendar, not details borrowed from a listing. Where we quote a published release time instead, it comes from the restaurant's own reservations page and we label it that way.
That is only possible because the list is short. SnagRes tracks 285 restaurants, 84 of them in New York and 60 in San Francisco, and the 284 with a measured record carry 66,314,725 logged availability checks between them. A service advertising tens of thousands of restaurants is describing a directory. It cannot tell you which night Verjus opens best on, or which night Jou Jou dips, because nothing is watching those two rooms closely enough to know.
So we will say the unhelpful thing plainly. San Francisco's French category is three restaurants on our list. If the bistro you want is not one of them, a broader service is the better fit and we are not going to pretend otherwise. If it is one of them, this is the closest thing that exists to a record of what those calendars really do.
The same measurements exist for New York, where eight French rooms run from Buvette (0%) to Bridges (63%) and one of them opens on most dates while selling almost no eight o'clock table. San Francisco's Japanese and Chinese lists are worth reading alongside this one too, since they show the same lesson from a different angle: the availability headline and the bookable hour are two separate facts, and only one of them usually gets published.
Keep reading: New York's French rooms, measured · The hardest Japanese tables in SF · The hardest Chinese tables in SF · The hardest reservations in SF · The hardest tables in Jackson Square · How SevenRooms works
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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.