Niku Steakhouse releases reservations on OpenTable 30 days ahead. The exact hour is not confirmed yet. A table for two was open on 83% of dates, so booking ahead works.
Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 257,070 checks of Niku Steakhouse through 19 October 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
Book it on OpenTable. Niku had a bookable two-top on 28 of the next 30 dates, 83%, so on most dates a seat is already there, and 46% of its openings fall between 7:00 and 8:30 PM. Save the planning for the tight cases, which are Saturday nights and parties of four or more.
Niku Steakhouse books on OpenTable across a window of about 30 days, and its own FAQ states that release plainly while giving a phone number for inquiries inside the window. Because the calendar was open on 28 of 30 dates, you can usually reserve directly. For a Saturday, book as soon as the date enters the window.
Not as hard as its reputation suggests. Niku showed a bookable two-top on 25 of 30 dates and a four-top on 24, across 257,070 availability checks, and 46% of the 2,424,100 open slots we have logged sit between 7:00 and 8:30 PM. Saturdays at 58% against Wednesday's 25%, and larger parties are the tight part.
Niku Steakhouse sits in SoMa in San Francisco and books on OpenTable within a window of about 30 days. In that window it had a table on 25 of 30 dates, so a reservation is usually available on the platform. Wednesday is the most open night in our record at 25% and Saturday the tightest at 15%.
We logged 78 release events at Niku across 18 observed days, clustering in the 8 PM hour local time. That is a measured pattern rather than a published policy, and more than four events a day means the calendar moves constantly rather than at one moment you can sit on. With a table open on 28 of 30 dates, there is no drop to race.
7:30 PM, which is the slot most often left open at 560 sightings, followed by 7:15 PM at 5,698. Niku is unusual that way: 46% of its openings are prime time, against 18% before 6 PM and 8% at 9 PM or later. You do not have to eat early here to get in.
Niku Steakhouse books on OpenTable, on a rolling window of about 30 days, and its own FAQ confirms that release while giving a phone number for inquiries inside it. OpenTable is where availability and any released seat appear. SnagRes watches that listing and alerts you when a table opens, and you book it yourself.
At unpredictable hours, as plans change and parties shrink. We logged 78 release events in 18 observed days, so this calendar is in near-constant motion. With a table open on 28 of 30 dates you rarely need one, but for a fixed Saturday at prime time a released seat is the reliable route, and an alert is how you hear about it.
Kokkari is more open overall, at 100% of dates against Niku's 83%, but Niku is the better bet for prime time. Kokkari's most frequently open slot is 5:15 PM with 41% of openings before 6 PM, while Niku's is 7:30 PM with 46% of openings between 7:00 and 8:30 PM. Pick on the hour you want, not the headline rate.
Less than you would guess, and the unusual part is what opens. On our reading of 19 October 2026, Niku Steakhouse had a bookable two-top on 25 of the 30 dates in its OpenTable window, 83%, and a bookable four-top on 24, 73%. Better still, 46% of everything we have ever seen open there falls between 7:00 PM and 8:30 PM, so the availability is at the hour people actually want.
That is a measurement, not an impression. We have run 257,070 availability checks against the Niku calendar, and 174,024 of them returned a bookable two-top, about one check in five. The calendar in front of you is open far more often than it is closed, and the seat behind it is usually dinner rather than a consolation slot.
Niku is a wagyu-focused steakhouse in SoMa, and OpenTable is the only platform its tables sit on. Its own FAQ confirms the 30-day release and gives a phone number for anything inside that window, so a call is a real second route even though it is not a second calendar.
The honest caveat is that the average hides two tight spots: Saturday, and parties of four or more. Both are covered below, with the numbers behind them.
Two-top availability: 25 of 30 dates, 83%, on the 19 October 2026 reading.
Four-top availability: 22 of 30 dates, 73%, on the same reading.
Prime time, 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM: 47% of the 2,424,100 open slots we have logged.
Sample: 257,070 availability checks on Niku alone, 174,024 of which found a bookable two-top.
Niku books about 30 days out on OpenTable, and the far edge of that window moves forward one date at a time. The furthest bookable night we could see was 29 days ahead, which is the ceiling of what we scan, so read it as at least that far rather than exactly that far.
On the release hour we will report what we logged and the sample it came from, because that is all anyone can honestly claim. We have recorded 78 separate release events at Niku across 18 of the days we watched it, and they cluster in the 8 PM hour local time. Seventy-eight events over eighteen days is more than four a day, which is a busy calendar edge rather than one clean nightly roll.
That number is worth holding next to Kokkari, because the comparison is unusually clean. Both restaurants are on OpenTable, both have exactly 257,252 checks behind them in our record, and Kokkari produced 68 release events against Niku's 78. Same platform, same sample size, a calendar that moves nearly four times as often. Seats at Niku are being given back and retaken repeatedly, which is good news if something is watching for you and bad news if you check once a day.
You do not need to catch a release to eat here, though. Dates deep inside the window are open, and the soonest bookable date on our reading was the very next day. Pick your night, book it, and skip the alarm.
Release hour: 8 PM local, the modal hour across 78 logged release events on 18 separate days.
Booking window: about 30 days, with the furthest bookable date we saw 29 days out.
Release frequency: more than four events a day against Kokkari's roughly one, on identical check volume.
Soonest bookable date on the reading: 1 day out.
Real dinner, which makes Niku a rarity on our list. Of the 2,424,100 open slots we have logged, 46% fall in the 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM prime band. The single time most often left open is 7:30 PM, with 560 sightings, followed by 7:15 PM at 5,698 and 6:15 PM at 5,254. The hour most restaurants surrender first is the hour Niku hands out most often.
Only 18% of what opens is before 6 PM and just 8% is at 9 PM or later. The earliest slot we have ever seen offered is 5:00 PM and the latest 9:45 PM, so there is no midnight-table trick being counted here to pad the total.
Compare Carbone, where zero of 18,139 logged openings fell between 7:00 PM and 8:30 PM, and the most frequently open slot is 11:30 PM. Or Kokkari, whose calendar is even more open than Niku's but whose most frequently open slot is 5:15 PM, with 41% of its openings before 6 PM. Two restaurants can both read as available while offering completely different evenings.
This is the thing a coverage number cannot tell you. A directory of tens of thousands of restaurants can say Niku has tables. It cannot tell you the tables are at 7:30 PM, which is the only version of the question a diner actually asked.
Most frequently open slot: 7:30 PM, 560 of 2,424,100 logged openings.
Prime time, 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM: 47%, the best share of any SF room in this cluster.
Before 6 PM: 31%. At 9 PM or later: 5%.
Range ever offered: 5:00 PM at the earliest, 9:45 PM at the latest.
Saturday, and groups. Across our full record, Wednesday returned a bookable two-top on 28,113 of 36,527 checks, 25%, while Saturday returned one on 21,293 of 7,707, 15%. Friday sat at 22%. A midweek check here is roughly one and a half times more likely to find something than a Saturday check, which is a real gap even though it is nowhere near the ten-to-one spread we see at New York's hardest rooms.
Party size costs more than the weekday does. Twenty-eight of 30 dates had a two-top and 24 had a four-top, so asking for four gives up four dates out of the month. That is the opposite of the pattern at the hardest tables we track, where a four-top is the open calendar rather than the closed one: Monkey Bar reads 50% for two and 47% for four, Carbone 10% and 10%. At Niku, and at most genuinely available restaurants, the small table is the easy one.
Put the two together and the hard booking at Niku is specific: Saturday at 7:30 PM for four or more. Everything softer than that is usually a single search away, and the softest version of all, a Wednesday at 7:15 PM for two, is close to walk-up easy by the standards of this list.
Sunday and Monday are quieter but genuinely open, at 17% and 70% respectively, so unlike several rooms in this cluster there is no closed day to plan around here.
Easiest night in our record: Wednesday, a two-top on 28,113 of 36,527 checks, 25%.
Hardest night: Saturday, 21,293 of 36,799 checks, 15%.
Party of four: open on 24 of 30 dates against 28 for a two-top.
The one hard booking: Saturday, prime time, four or more. Almost everything else is available.
Book it on OpenTable for the night you want. On 28 of the next 30 dates there was a table, usually at a normal dinner hour, so the reservation is one search rather than a campaign. If your date is further out than a month, book it the day it enters the window.
Move the day before you move the hour. Prime time is the strength here, not the weakness, so there is little point taking a 5:00 PM seat to dodge a crowd that is mostly clustered on Saturday. Shifting from Saturday to Wednesday buys you ten percentage points of availability. Shifting from 7:30 PM to 5:00 PM buys you less than that, because only 18% of what opens is early in the first place.
Keep the alert for the version that runs out. A Saturday at 7:30 PM for four is the booking that fails, and those seats come back at unpredictable hours: 78 release events in 18 days says this calendar is in constant motion. SnagRes watches Niku on OpenTable and texts or emails you the moment a table opens, so you hear about a freed Saturday while it is still there, and then you book it yourself.
Search OpenTable first, since there was a bookable table on 28 of the next 30 dates.
Expect a real dinner hour, because 46% of open slots are between 7:00 and 8:30 PM and 7:30 PM is the most common of all.
Trade Saturday for Wednesday before you trade 7:30 PM for 5:00 PM: 77% against 15% is the bigger win.
Book a Saturday, or a party of four, as early as the window allows.
Set an alert when the night and the hour are both fixed, and let it catch the release for you.
We track 284 restaurants across New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago. That is the entire list, and the small number is deliberate. Table Alert advertises 62,198 restaurants. Nobody watching 62,198 rooms can tell you that Niku's most frequently open slot is 7:30 PM, that its Saturday runs at 58% against Wednesday's 25%, or that it logged 193 release events in 18 days while Kokkari logged 21 on the same platform and the same number of checks. We traded coverage for knowing the rooms we cover.
The figures come from re-checking the same calendars around the clock, 61,530,416 availability checks so far across the tracked list, of which 257,070 are Niku Steakhouse. When a number on this page moves, it is because the restaurant changed.
We also never book a table. SnagRes watches Niku and tells you the second a seat appears, then you book it yourself, in your own OpenTable account, at the restaurant's own price. No bot holds a seat under a stranger's name and there is nothing for sale afterward. TableSwap charges $75 per successful reservation, which is the paid resale practice New York's 2024 reservation law was written to address, and that is not a business we are in.
Which means the reservation is in your name from the first second, the restaurant's own cancellation policy stays intact, and nothing happens to the table unless you tap to confirm it.
Keep reading: The hardest reservations in SF · Hardest SoMa reservations · Kokkari, more open but earlier · Mister Jiu's, closed Sundays and Mondays · How to get a Benu reservation
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Niku Steakhouse releases reservations 30 days ahead, and its calendar runs about 30 days deep in our checks. At the last check a table for two was bookable on 83% of the dates in that window, so booking a few days ahead is usually enough.
Niku Steakhouse's calendar reaches 1 December on Sunday, 1 November, and each later date follows the same rule: 30 days ahead. Hours are local to the restaurant.
SnagRes watches Niku Steakhouse, 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 Niku Steakhouse free, or SF dinner reservations, live, or last-minute tables in SF tonight.