The single hardest reservation in the Fillmore is State Bird Provisions, which showed a bookable table on 0 percent of the dates we checked. After that the neighborhood is quite open. Merchant Roots sat at 77 percent, Copra at 87 percent, The Progress at 90 percent, and The Anchovy Bar at 97 percent, so State Bird is the only room that truly requires a plan.
State Bird Provisions does not take normal reservations. It sells prepaid tickets through Tock, and a new date opens at 12 PM on a rolling 30-day window. Set an alarm for noon 30 days ahead, sign in to Tock in advance, and check out fast. If you miss the drop, the next seats come from cancellations at random hours, which is where an alert helps most.
If you want great food without a fight, the Fillmore is generous. Copra offers modern Indian cooking and books on 87 percent of dates, The Progress serves New American on 90 percent, and The Anchovy Bar is a seafood and beer bar open on 97 percent. Merchant Roots rounds it out at 77 percent on Tock. All four are easy to reserve within a week.
The Progress is not hard to book. It showed a bookable table on 90 percent of the dates we checked, which means about nine nights out of ten had an open slot. It releases dates at 9 AM on a rolling 30-day window through OpenTable, and a plan a few days out will almost always land you a table.
The Fillmore spreads across several platforms. State Bird Provisions and Merchant Roots use Tock, while Copra, The Progress, and The Anchovy Bar use OpenTable. Around the city you will also find Resy and SevenRooms in play. SnagRes tracks all four platforms in one place, so you do not have to remember which app a given restaurant uses.
State Bird Provisions releases tickets at 12 PM on a rolling 30-day window through Tock. A fresh date opens each day at noon, exactly one month before that night, so the table you want becomes available at 12 PM 30 days ahead. Prime weekend tickets are usually claimed within moments of the drop.
Yes, both are easy to book. Copra opened a table on 87 percent of the dates we checked and The Anchovy Bar on 97 percent, both through OpenTable. Copra releases dates at 9 AM and The Anchovy Bar at 12 PM, each on a rolling 30-day window. For either one, a reservation within the same week is a realistic ask.
The honest answer is that the Fillmore has just one genuinely hard table, and it is State Bird Provisions. Across the dates we checked, State Bird showed a bookable seat on 0 percent of them, while every other restaurant on this list opened up on the large majority of nights. So this is not a neighborhood of locked doors. It is one famous room that fills the instant tickets drop, surrounded by places you can usually book with a few days of notice.
Here is the district ranked from hardest to easiest, measured as the share of checked dates that had a bookable table. A lower percentage means a harder reservation, so the top of this list is where you actually need help.
State Bird Provisions, 0 percent. James Beard winning small plates sold as prepaid Tock tickets that release at 12 PM on a rolling 30-day window. This is the one that vanishes.
Merchant Roots, 77 percent. A tasting-focused spot booked through Tock, open on roughly three of every four nights we checked.
Copra, 87 percent. Modern Indian cooking on OpenTable, with dates releasing at 9 AM across a 30-day window.
The Progress, 90 percent. New American cooking on OpenTable, releasing at 9 AM on a 30-day window, and bookable on about nine nights out of ten.
The Anchovy Bar, 97 percent. A seafood and beer bar on OpenTable, releasing at 12 PM, and almost always open when you look.
State Bird Provisions built its name on a dim sum style parade of small plates pushed around the dining room on carts, and a James Beard award turned an already busy room into a hard ticket. It does not take ordinary reservations. Instead it sells prepaid tickets through Tock, and a new date opens at 12 PM on a rolling 30-day window. The dining room is small, the noon drop is a scheduled rush, and demand runs far past the number of seats on offer.
That combination is why State Bird sits at 0 percent while the rest of the Fillmore does not. A ticketed release at a fixed minute concentrates every hopeful diner into the same instant, and the calendar empties before most people finish choosing a party size. The other restaurants here take normal reservations that refill throughout the day, so a slot you miss at 9 AM is often back by dinner. State Bird has no such second chance built into its release, which is exactly what pushes it into a tier of its own.
For State Bird Provisions, the release itself is your first and best shot. Set an alarm for 12 PM exactly 30 days before the night you want, sign in to Tock ahead of time, and have your party size ready so you can check out in seconds. Prime weekend tickets still go fast, so treat the noon drop as a race you might lose rather than a sure thing.
When the drop does not work out, the next tables come from cancellations. Ticket holders change plans, and a returned seat becomes bookable by whoever spots it first, at no fixed hour of the day. No person can refresh Tock from morning to night, so this is the moment an alert earns its keep. SnagRes watches State Bird for you and pings you the second a ticket reappears, while the seat is still there to grab.
For the other four rooms, the strategy is simpler, because there barely is one. You can open OpenTable or Tock, pick a night, and book, often for the same week. An alert still helps if you have your heart set on a specific busy Saturday that happens to be full when you look, but you are no longer fighting a wall of people at a single minute. If your first choice of time is taken, shifting an hour earlier or later usually solves it on its own.
Almost all of them. Copra opened a table on 87 percent of the dates we checked, The Progress on 90 percent, and The Anchovy Bar on 97 percent, all through OpenTable. Merchant Roots, on Tock, sat at 77 percent. For any of these, a plan a week out will almost always land, and even a same-week Friday is a real possibility. You do not need a clever strategy for these rooms so much as a free evening and a small amount of flexibility on the time.
SnagRes tracks all five of these restaurants across Resy, OpenTable, Tock, and SevenRooms, and emails or texts you the moment a watched table opens. It alerts you, it does not book for you, so you stay in control of the final tap. For the bookable four, an alert is a convenience that saves you from checking. For State Bird Provisions, it is the difference between eating there this month and refreshing an empty calendar.
Why State Bird Provisions is the only truly hard table in the Fillmore, and how Copra, The Progress, and The Anchovy Bar stay easy to book.
Keep reading: The hardest reservations in SF · How to get a State Bird Provisions reservation · Restaurants you can actually book