Four Kings releases reservations on OpenTable 3 weeks ahead, at 12:00 PM PT. 32% of its dates had a table open up at some point.
Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 275,471 checks of Four Kings through 19 October 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
Two ways. Be on OpenTable at noon Pacific when your date enters the roughly 21-day window, or catch a table that comes back later. Four Kings showed a bookable table on 20% of the next 30 dates, 6 of 30, so most diners get in through a returned seat rather than the release itself.
Noon Pacific, three weeks ahead, by the restaurant's own page. Our checks agree: 226 release events on 57 separate days, clustering at 12:00 PM PT, the most release activity of any restaurant in this San Francisco cluster.
On OpenTable, and only OpenTable, since there is no phone line or second platform holding its tables. Have the app open and signed in with your party size and time chosen before noon, so you are confirming rather than typing. If the release is gone, watch for a cancellation instead of refreshing.
Yes. Four Kings showed a bookable table on 20% of the dates in the 30-day window we track, 6 of 30, and a four-top on 3 of them. Among the San Francisco rooms we compare it with, the order runs Four Kings (20%), Saison (63%), Rich Table (73%) and Zuni Cafe (83%).
About 21 days, which is shorter than the 30-day window most San Francisco restaurants use. In our tracking the furthest open date was 20 days out. A plan made six weeks ahead is a plan against a calendar that has not opened yet.
9:45 PM, the most frequently open time in our 58,747 logged slots, and 99% of all availability here is 9 PM or later. Only 1% of slots fall between 7:00 and 8:30 PM, and the earliest seat we have ever seen is 5:45 PM.
Sunday, at 19% of our historical Sunday checks, ahead of Thursday at 12% and Saturday at 14%, with Friday hardest at 7%. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have never shown an open table across 39,875, 39,362 and 38,877 checks, so the real choice is among four nights.
SnagRes watches Four Kings on OpenTable and texts or emails you the moment a table opens, including cancellations that surface long after the release. It does not book the table for you and takes no fee on a seat. It tells you a table exists while it is still there, and you book it yourself at the restaurant price.
Yes, and the number that matters is not the one people quote. Four Kings showed a bookable table on 20% of the dates in the 30-day window we track, 6 of 30. For a party of four the count was 3 dates, a 10% rate. The modern Cantonese room in Chinatown is not hard in general. It is hard in a very specific pattern, and the pattern is what you can act on.
Those readings come out of 275,471 availability checks on Four Kings on OpenTable, run around the clock. We watch 284 restaurants across New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, a deliberately short list, which is why we can tell you how many dates a four-top opened on here rather than telling you the restaurant is popular.
Against a cluster of other San Francisco rooms, the order by dates open for two, lowest first, runs Four Kings (20%), Saison (63%), Rich Table (73%) and Zuni Cafe (83%). Four Kings is the room where a seat genuinely exists a few times a month and every detail of when decides whether you get it.
The other thing to know before the tactics: what opens here is not the dinner most people are picturing. 99% of the availability we have logged is 9 PM or later. Four Kings is not a hard 8 o'clock table. It is a late table that is hard, and those are different problems with different solutions.
At noon Pacific, three weeks ahead, by the restaurant's own page, and our own record agrees. We have caught 226 release events here on 57 separate days, the most release activity we have measured at any restaurant in this cluster, and they cluster at 12:00 PM PT. A published rule and a measured hour that line up is as solid as a release time gets.
What that buys you is a precise start line. Be on OpenTable at noon when your date enters the window, signed in with your party size chosen, because a table that goes up at noon at a room this hard is not there for long.
The window itself is shorter than most people assume. Four Kings books about 21 days ahead rather than 30. In our tracking the furthest open date was 20 days out, which means the calendar you are fighting over is three weeks deep, not a month. Anyone planning a Four Kings dinner six weeks out is planning around a calendar that does not exist yet.
There is one platform and no phone line holding a parallel set of tables, so OpenTable is where the release lands and where a cancelled seat comes back. That keeps the job simple even though the table is not.
Late, and almost exclusively late. Of the 58,747 open slots we have logged at Four Kings, 99% were 9 PM or later, and 9:45 PM is the most frequently open time in the building.
The prime-time picture is the sharpest number on this page. Just 1% of those 58,747 slots fell between 7:00 and 8:30 PM. A 7:30 PM Four Kings table is not a hard booking so much as a rare event, and planning an evening around one is planning around the exception.
Early is rarer still. The earliest seat we have ever recorded is 5:45 PM and the latest is 10:00 PM, so the practical range at Four Kings is 9:00 to 10:00 PM and everything else is an exception.
That shape has an upside if you take it seriously. A late dinner in Chinatown is a normal thing to want, and if you go in intending to eat after 9 PM you are shopping where nearly all of this restaurant's logged inventory sits, rather than competing for the sliver everyone else is refreshing for.
99% of open slots were 9 PM or later, and 9:45 PM is the single most frequently open time.
Only 1% of 58,747 logged slots fell between 7:00 and 8:30 PM.
The earliest seat we have ever recorded is 5:45 PM. The latest is 10:00 PM.
A four-top opened on 3 of 30 dates against 6 for a two-top, so go as two if you can.
Four, not seven. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have never shown an open table across 39,875, 39,362 and 38,877 checks respectively, which is what a dark night looks like in our data. Every table we have ever logged here came on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
Sunday is the best of those and Friday the worst. Across our full check history, 19% of Sunday checks found a table, then Thursday at 12% and Saturday at 14%, with Friday at 7%. Friday being the hardest night at a restaurant whose availability is almost all after 9 PM is the kind of detail that only turns up if you are counting.
Read those weekday rates as a ranking rather than as odds for next Sunday. They cover every check we have run, while the 20% headline describes the current window, and the two numbers answer different questions. Both come from the same 275,471 checks.
Stack the three findings and the target is specific: a Sunday, late, for two people, on a date entering the 21-day window that day. That is one narrow slot rather than a general hope, and narrow is what you want when the calendar is 20% open.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have never shown a table, across 39,875, 39,362 and 38,877 checks.
Sunday reads 19% of historical checks, Thursday 12%, Saturday 14% and Friday 7%.
The booking window runs about 21 days, not 30. Our furthest open date was 20 days out.
Be on OpenTable at the published noon release, the same hour our checks measured.
Missing it is the normal outcome, and a cancellation is the other real path in. With a table on 6 of the next 30 dates, most people who eat here either caught the release or caught a seat that came back. Freed tables do not arrive on a clock: they surface as plans change and parties shrink, and each one belongs to whoever sees it first.
SnagRes watches Four Kings on OpenTable and texts or emails you the moment a table opens, including the late seat that reappears at an hour you would never have checked. That is the part no person can do by hand, because catching a returned table means being present across three weeks of dates rather than lucky on one day.
We do not book it for you, and we never take a fee on a table. Services that resell reservations charge per seat, TableSwap advertises $75 per successful reservation, and that fee model is the practice New York's 2024 reservation law was written to stop. We alert, you book, at the restaurant, at the restaurant's own price, in your own name.
If a Chinatown dinner rather than this exact room is the goal, the Chinese cuisine guide ranks what else in the city opens and how often. And if you want the opposite experience for a change, Zuni Cafe opened on 83% of dates with 23% of its slots in prime time, which is a reminder that hard is a property of a restaurant and not of the city.
Keep reading: State Bird Provisions, a noon OpenTable release · Zuni Cafe, open on 83% of dates · Hardest Chinese reservations in SF · When SF restaurants release tables · How party size changes your odds
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Four Kings releases reservations 21 days ahead at noon, and its calendar runs about 30 days deep in our checks. At the last check a table for two was bookable on 20% of the dates in that window, so the release itself is the one real chance, and the rest come back as cancellations.
Because the tables that exist are gone at the drop. Across 275,471 checks, Four Kings has shown a bookable table for two on 20% of dates, though 32% of dates opened at some point. We have recorded 226 release events there. 1% 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.
Four Kings's calendar reaches 1 December on Tuesday, 10 November at noon, and each later date follows the same rule: 21 days ahead at noon. Hours are local to the restaurant.
SnagRes watches Four Kings, 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 Four Kings free, or SF dinner reservations, live, or last-minute tables in SF tonight.