Raku releases reservations on SevenRooms 14 days ahead. The exact hour is not confirmed yet. A table for two was open on 47% of dates, so booking ahead works.
Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 279,907 checks of Raku through 19 October 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
Raku takes reservations online 14 days ahead, through DoorDash Reservations from its own site, and the same tables appear on SevenRooms. It does not publish a release hour. At our last check a table for two was open on 47% of the next 30 dates, 14 of the 14 it had on sale, so an early seat is usually there and a prime evening one takes a cancellation alert.
Yes. Raku takes reservations online, through DoorDash Reservations from its own site and on SevenRooms, up to 14 days ahead. Across 279,907 checks, 54% of the open slots we logged were before 6 PM, with 5:00 PM the most common, so booking a few days out for an early seat usually works.
Open SevenRooms and check the next 14 days, which is the whole calendar Raku offers. At our last reading 14 of those 14 dates had a bookable table, most of them early, so an early seat is usually available on short notice. A prime evening slot on a fixed night is the one that needs a cancellation, and an alert is how you catch that.
Less than it looks. Raku showed a bookable table on 47% of the next 30 days, but it only books 14 days ahead, so the far half of that month was never on sale. Of the dates it can actually reach, 14 had a table. The competition here is for a specific hour, not for a seat.
Early. Of the 1,034,711 open slots we have logged, 54% are before 6 PM and 5:00 PM is the most frequently open time. Only 3% are 9 PM or later, and 29% fall between 7:00 and 8:30 PM, which is the band that fills first.
Monday. Across 40,599 checks of Monday dates, 12,072 came back open, about 30%, while Thursday runs at 40% on a comparable sample. Saturday is not the problem at this room. If you tested Raku on a Monday and found nothing, you tested the one night that misrepresents it.
Raku does not publish one. We have caught 68 release events across 58 days and they cluster in the mid-afternoon, local time, on a 14-day window. That is a measured tendency rather than a guaranteed drop time, so it is a good hour to look rather than a starting gun. New dates also appear inside the window as guests cancel.
Through SevenRooms, where Raku uses a 14-day reservation window. Because the window is short, the practical approach is to check often, take an early seat when you see one, and set an alert for the evening slot you actually want.
No. Raku is not on Resy or OpenTable. The Reserve button on the Raku website now opens DoorDash Reservations, and the same tables are listed on SevenRooms. Because neither is a large marketplace listing, some diners never find the calendar at all.
This page measures Raku's East Village room, which books 14 days ahead, so everything is decided inside two weeks. Early slots are the easy ones, with 5:00 PM the most frequently open time, and Monday is the night to avoid. The SoHo and Midtown rooms book the same way, up to two weeks ahead, and keep most of their seats for walk-ins; we do not measure their calendars.
At random hours, as plans change and parties shrink, and at a room this small a freed seat usually goes within minutes. They matter most for prime evening times, since the early slots are generally on the calendar already. That is the gap an alert fills: you hear about the 7:30 PM table while it is still there.
For the live calendar, see Raku availability right now, rechecked around the clock.
Not inside its own window, and that qualifier is the whole story. Raku showed a bookable table on 47% of the next 30 days at our last reading, which sounds middling until you notice that Raku only books 14 days ahead. The back half of that month is not full, it is not on sale yet. Of the 14 dates its calendar actually reaches, 14 had a table.
Raku is a small East Village room known for handmade udon, and its Reserve button now goes to DoorDash Reservations, with the same tables still listed on SevenRooms, which is where we read them. We re-check it around the clock, 279,907 date-checks so far, and what comes back is a restaurant you can usually get into within the next two weeks rather than one that is permanently sealed.
The last reading is a good illustration. The soonest open date was 0 days out, and the furthest was 13 days out, effectively the edge of the window. Availability was not clustered at one lonely end of the calendar, it was spread across almost all of it.
Which makes Raku unusual among the rooms people search for this way. Most of them come back at or near zero. Raku comes back open. The competition here is not for a table, it is for a particular hour on a particular night.
Because a 30-day availability score counts days a restaurant has not put on sale. Raku sells 14 days at a time, so the rest of those 30 dates could not have been bookable no matter how empty the dining room was. Scoring them as unavailable is accurate arithmetic and a misleading impression.
Read against the calendar it actually offers, Raku was open on 14 of 14 dates. That is the number to plan with, and a party of four fares the same as a party of two: 47% over the window, on 14 dates.
The same caution applies to the accumulated figures further down this page. Many of the looks we take at a Raku date are looks at a date beyond its window, which drags the overall open rate down to 38% of 279,907 checks. Those numbers are useful for comparing one weekday with another, since every weekday is dragged down equally. They are not a fair estimate of your odds tonight.
This is the kind of distinction that disappears when a service lists tens of thousands of restaurants and reports a single percentage for each. We would rather spend a paragraph explaining what one number means than publish a score we know reads wrong.
Early. Of the 1,034,711 open slots we have logged at Raku, 54% are before 6 PM, the most frequently open time is 5:00 PM, and the earliest we have seen offered is 3:00 PM. Only 3% are 9 PM or later, and 9:00 PM is the latest seating we have recorded.
The evening is where people compete. 29% of the open slots we log fall between 7:00 and 8:30 PM, and a specific prime hour on a weekend is the thing that fills first. Moving your booking a little later in the evening, or into the late afternoon, does more for you than trying the same 7:30 PM slot again.
Taken together, an early bowl of udon here is close to walk-in easy, and a prime evening seat on a weekend is the thing people are actually competing for. Sorting the calendar by time rather than by date is the single most useful habit on this room.
Before 6 PM: 54% of every open slot we have logged.
5:00 PM is the single most frequently open time.
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM: 29% of open slots.
9 PM or later: 3% of open slots, and 9:00 PM is the latest seating we have seen.
Monday. Across 40,599 checks of Monday dates, 12,072 came back with a table, about 30%. Every other day of the week sits between 38% and 40% on samples of similar size. Six nights look alike and one does not.
That is a much cleaner signal than the usual weekend-versus-weekday story, and it is worth taking literally. If you tried Raku on a Monday, found nothing, and concluded the room is impossible, our data says you tested the one night that would tell you that.
Saturday, for what it is worth, is not the problem here. It came back open on 15,598 of 40,070 checks, in line with the midweek nights. This is a room where the day of the week barely matters as long as you avoid one of them.
Monday: 12,072 open date-checks out of 40,599, about 30%.
Thursday: 15,562 out of 39,334, or 40%.
Friday: 15,605 out of 39,413. Wednesday: 15,542 out of 39,711. Saturday: 15,598 out of 40,070.
Sunday: 15,556 out of 40,518. Tuesday: 15,591 out of 40,262.
On a 14-day window, with new dates appearing in the afternoon. We have caught 68 release events at Raku across 58 separate days, and they cluster around 3 PM local time, so the date that sits two weeks out tends to join the calendar mid-afternoon rather than at a dramatic morning drop.
Raku does not publish a release hour, so treat that as a measured tendency rather than a starting gun. It is enough to know when to look, and not enough to promise a drop to the minute.
The short window is also why Raku feels harder than it is. You cannot book a birthday two months out, so the only planning horizon is a fortnight, and a room you cannot plan around reads as a room you cannot get into. Inside the fortnight the tables are mostly there.
Open SevenRooms, look at the next 14 days, and treat that as the entire calendar. On 14 of those dates there was a table at our last reading, so if you are flexible on time you will usually find one. Set your party size before you search so you are not filling in a form while a slot goes.
For a specific prime evening seat on a fixed night, plan on a cancellation. Those surface at random hours as plans change and parties shrink, and at a room this small a freed seat is claimed within minutes. SnagRes watches Raku on SevenRooms around the clock and emails or texts you the moment a table opens.
We do not book it for you. You get the alert and a link, and you complete the reservation yourself, in your own name. We never hold a table under another name and never charge for a booking, which is a line worth drawing in a category where several services charge per successful reservation.
And if Raku is the easy end of your evening, it is worth knowing where the hard end sits. The Eighty Six, also on SevenRooms, is a release-time room: its tables go within moments of each drop, so you plan around that minute. Red Hook Tavern opens far more often midweek than on a weekend. Jeju Noodle Bar releases 44 days ahead at midnight. The difference between those pages and this one is not effort, it is measurement.
Look at the full 14-day window, since that is as far ahead as Raku books.
Search early first. Before 6 PM covers 54% of everything we see open, and 5:00 PM is the most common slot of all.
Avoid Monday if you can move the night, since Monday runs about 30% against 40% on Thursday.
If you want an evening table, look later in the evening before you settle for waiting on 7:30 PM.
Let an alert watch Raku for a prime-time cancellation, since those appear at hours no person can predict.
Keep reading: How to get a table at The Eighty Six · How to get a Red Hook Tavern reservation · How to get a Jeju Noodle Bar reservation · The easiest night to book in NYC · Hardest East Village reservations · The hardest reservations in NYC · How to get an omakase reservation
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Raku releases reservations 14 days ahead, and its calendar runs about 30 days deep in our checks. At the last check a table for two was bookable on 47% of the dates in that window, so book at the release for a weekend and watch the date for a weeknight.
Raku's calendar reaches 1 December on Tuesday, 17 November, and each later date follows the same rule: 14 days ahead. Hours are local to the restaurant.
SnagRes watches Raku, 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 Raku free, or NYC dinner reservations, live, or last-minute tables in NYC tonight.