Benu releases reservations on SevenRooms 30 days ahead, at 10:00 AM PT. A table for two was open on 30% of dates, so booking ahead works.
Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 270,015 checks of Benu through 19 October 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
Be on SevenRooms at 10:00 AM, 30 days before your date, or catch a cancellation later. Benu shows a table for two on 30% of dates, best on a Thursday at 70%, and is closed Sunday to Tuesday.
At 10:00 AM each day, up to 30 days in advance, on SevenRooms. That hour comes from Benu's own reservations page rather than from our inference. We have also logged 126 later release events, so availability can appear well after the morning drop.
Yes. Benu books on SevenRooms, and only SevenRooms, usually reached through benusf.com rather than a marketplace app. SnagRes watches that calendar and alerts you when a seat appears; you book it on SevenRooms yourself.
No. Benu's own site sends reservations to SevenRooms, not Tock or Resy. A Tock search for Benu finds nothing because there is nothing there to find.
Yes, though the raw percentage overstates it. Benu showed a bookable table on 30% of dates at the last check, but it has never opened on a Sunday, Monday or Tuesday in our record, so the open dates are concentrated in the four nights it serves.
Every opening we have recorded falls between 5:00 PM and 8:30 PM, and 8:00 PM opens most often. 0% of openings are 9 PM or later.
Thursday, at 70% of checks, then Wednesday at 70%. Friday is 49% and Saturday 26%. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday have never opened, which almost certainly means the room is dark.
No. A four-top shows on 43% of dates against 30% for two, so the larger party is no harder a booking. Party size is one of the cheapest things to test before you give up on a month.
On the SnagRes Benu page, snagres.com/restaurants/benu, which lists every date that had a seat at the last check. This guide explains the pattern behind those dates: a seat on 30% of dates at any moment, and 51% open at some point.
We do not publish Benu's deposit or cancellation terms, because that is the restaurant's own policy and not something we measure. Its reservations page is the authority on what is charged and when.
Benu reservations open on SevenRooms at 10:00 AM, 30 days ahead, by the restaurant's own rule. A seat for two shows on 30% of dates at any given moment, and 70% of Thursdays, while Sunday to Tuesday never open because the room is dark. So be on SevenRooms at 10 AM for a weekend, or set an alert and take the cancellation. See Benu availability right now.
Harder than most rooms and easier than its reputation. At the last check Benu showed a bookable table for two on 9 of the next 30 dates, which is 30%, and for four on 13, which is 43%. Those are the raw numbers, and taken alone they flatter nobody.
The honest version needs the calendar. Benu has never once shown a bookable Sunday, Monday or Tuesday in our record: zero open tables in 38,918 Sunday checks, 39,071 Monday checks and 38,967 Tuesday checks. That is the signature of a room that is dark those nights rather than one that sells out, so the real week at Benu is four nights long, and the open dates are concentrated inside it.
That is a different story from a room where the calendar is empty for months, and it is the kind of distinction you can only draw by checking the same three-Michelin-star dining room over and over. Benu has been through 270,015 availability checks in our records, every date in its window, two party sizes, around the clock.
Measured the same way, Saison shows a table on 63% of dates, Quince on 40%, Cotogna on 20%, Angler on 87% and Boulevard on 87%. Among the San Francisco three-star rooms, Benu sits in the middle: not the impossible one, not a walk-in.
Benu releases reservations at 10:00 AM, up to 30 days ahead, through SevenRooms. That is not our inference. The restaurant's own reservations page says reservations are released at 10:00 am each day up to 30 days in advance, and we record it as a primary source rather than a rumour, which is why this page names an hour while several others in this cluster refuse to.
SevenRooms is the part people miss. It is not a marketplace you already have open, it is the venue's own booking system, usually reached through benusf.com rather than an app on your phone. Benu is not on Tock or Resy, so searching those finds nothing.
The calendar does keep moving after the drop. We have logged 126 release events at Benu across 37 days of observation, each one availability appearing where there had been none, so a date that read empty this morning is not settled for the month. Over the whole record, 51% of dates opened at some point.
Two practical consequences. Set an alarm for 10:00 AM thirty days before the night you want, and do not treat a closed calendar as final, because seats keep reappearing across the window after the morning release.
Benu runs seatings, and the data says so clearly. Across 148,279 open slots we have recorded, every opening has fallen between 5:00 PM and 8:30 PM, and the slot that opens most often is 8:00 PM. The floor is not selling a rolling clock.
Prime time, 7:00 to 8:30 PM, holds 56% of the openings, and 37% fall before 6 PM, so the practical choice at Benu is an early seating or a late one.
There is no late tier at all. 8:30 PM is the latest opening we have ever recorded, and 0% of our slots are 9 PM or later. If you are used to hunting a 9:45 PM leftover at a busy restaurant, that strategy does not exist here, because the tasting menu runs long and the last seating is early by design.
Party size runs the friendly direction. For two people the calendar showed a seat on 30% of dates; for four it showed one on 43%. If you are booking a group, check four before you conclude the month is closed.
Openings run from 5:00 PM to 8:30 PM. Most often open: 8:00 PM.
Prime time, 7:00 to 8:30 PM: 56% of openings. Before 6 PM: 37%.
Party of four: 43% of dates open, against 30% for two.
Thursday. Across 270,015 availability checks, Benu had a bookable table on 70% of Thursdays, 70% of Wednesdays and 49% of Fridays. We have never seen a bookable Sunday, Monday or Tuesday table here.
Saturday sits at 26%, the hardest night Benu serves. The shape is worth noticing: the night everybody wants is the thinnest one, and moving a Benu dinner from Saturday to Thursday improves your odds without changing anything else.
None of this is about how good the room is on a given night. It is a statement about supply: the same number of seats meets much more demand on a Saturday, and our checks see the result rather than the cause.
Thursday 70% of checks showed an open table, Wednesday 70%.
Sunday, Monday and Tuesday: zero open tables in our record.
Be on SevenRooms at 10:00 AM, 30 days before the night you want, with your details already filled in. That is the one moment on this page that behaves like a race, and it is the only reliable way to choose your own date rather than take what is left.
Then narrow what you are asking for. Aim at a Wednesday or a Thursday rather than a Friday or Saturday, ask for 8:00 PM, and try four people as well as two. Each of those moves is worth more than refreshing harder.
If the drop is gone, the way in is a cancellation, and that is the part no person can cover by hand. Seats return to Benu's SevenRooms calendar at whatever hour somebody's plans change, and each one is bookable by whoever reaches it first. We re-check Benu continuously and send a text or an email the moment a seat appears, so you hear about it while it is still there.
We never book the table. SnagRes watches and tells you; you reserve it yourself, in your own name, at the restaurant's own price. We take nothing for a table and never hold or resell one.
Set an alarm for 10:00 AM, 30 days before your date, with SevenRooms already open.
Aim at Wednesday or Thursday: Thursday runs at 70%, Saturday at 26%.
Ask for 8:00 PM, the slot that opens most often.
Do not wait for a 9 PM seat, because no opening later than 8:30 PM has ever been recorded.
Let a tracker watch for a returned seat, since those come back at hours nobody can sit through.
Every availability number on this page comes from our own repeated reads of Benu's live SevenRooms calendar, 270,015 checks so far, most recently on 19 October 2026. The one rule that does not is the 10:00 AM release, which comes from the restaurant's own reservations page and is cited as such.
We track 284 restaurants across New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago. The list is short deliberately. A service advertising 62,198 restaurants cannot tell you which hour Benu opens most often or which night it never serves, because nothing is checking any one of those rooms often enough to know. Being able to say things that specific has cost us 61,530,416 availability checks.
Where we have not verified something, we leave it out. This page makes no claim about Benu's menu, its price, its deposit terms or its cancellation policy, because those belong to the restaurant and we do not measure them. What we measure is when this room has a seat, and that is the whole of what it tells you.
Keep reading: Benu availability right now · Saison, the other SoMa three-star · Atelier Crenn and its ticketed seats · Angler, an easier table on the water · How SevenRooms releases tables · The hardest reservations in SF · How to get a Michelin reservation
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Benu releases reservations 30 days ahead at 10 AM, and its calendar runs about 30 days deep in our checks. At the last check a table for two was bookable on 30% of the dates in that window, so book at the release for a weekend and watch the date for a weeknight.
Because the tables that exist are gone at the drop. Across 270,015 checks, Benu has shown a bookable table for two on 30% of dates, though 51% of dates opened at some point. We have recorded 126 release events there. 56% of the openings we have seen were between 7:00 and 8:30 PM. The seats you can actually get are the ones that come back when someone cancels, which is why an alert on the date beats refreshing.
Benu's calendar reaches 1 December on Sunday, 1 November at 10 AM, and each later date follows the same rule: 30 days ahead at 10 AM. Hours are local to the restaurant.
SnagRes watches Benu, along with 283 more hard-to-book restaurants in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, and alerts you when a table opens. Watching one is free and no card is needed: watch Benu free, or SF dinner reservations, live, or last-minute tables in SF tonight.