Saison releases reservations on OpenTable on the 1st of the previous month. The exact hour is not confirmed yet. A table for two was open on 63% of dates, so booking ahead works.
Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 205,047 checks of Saison through 19 October 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
Book the half of the calendar that opens. Saison showed a bookable table on 63% of the next 30 dates, and availability is concentrated on weeknights: 79% of Wednesday checks found a table against 47% on Saturday. Target 5:30 PM or 8:15 PM, keep two or three candidate dates, and let an alert catch a freed seat on a fixed date.
Saison books on OpenTable, the only platform hosting its tables, across a rolling 30-day window. There is no phone line or second site holding a parallel set of seats. We observed 28 release events on 16 days, with new dates appearing in the 8 PM hour local time, so an evening check 30 days out is a good moment for a prime weekend date.
Saison is hard but reachable. Across the 30-day window we track it showed an open table on 63% of dates, 15 of 30, which is far more often than rooms like Four Kings, which sat at 20% across 275,471 checks. Prime Saturdays go fast, at 47% of historical checks, while Wednesdays ran at 79%.
About a month. Saison rolls one new date onto a 30-day window each day rather than releasing a month at a time, and in our tracking the far edge was bookable 29 days out while the very next night was bookable too. The restaurant's own page promises a month out by the 1st of the month prior, which is a deadline for the block rather than the only moment a date appears.
Easier than the reputation suggests, if your nights flex. Saison, one of the city's marquee tasting menus, showed a table on 50% of the next 30 dates, with 79% of historical Wednesday checks finding one. That is a realistic goal rather than a lottery, provided you avoid Saturday and the 7:30 PM slot that has never existed here.
Saison books through OpenTable, and only OpenTable. There is no separate phone line or second platform holding its tables, so OpenTable is where the daily roll lands and where seats reopen as plans change through the month. One listing is all an alert needs to cover.
Wednesday. It leads our full check history at 84%, with Tuesday at 90%, Thursday at 74%, Friday at 53% and Saturday last at 46%. Sunday and Monday have never shown an open table across 29,559 and 29,734 checks, so the real choice is between four nights, not seven.
Our slot data shows two seatings and no middle. Of 325,768 open slots, availability runs 5:00 to 6:00 PM and then 8:00 to 9:00 PM, with nothing at all between 6:15 and 7:45 PM. 8:15 PM is the single most frequently open time, and 9:00 PM is the latest seat we have ever recorded.
Saison is genuinely hard, and it is not a lottery. It showed a bookable table on 63% of the dates in the 30-day window we track, 15 of the next 30, which puts it squarely between the San Francisco rooms you can walk into on OpenTable and the ones that never open at all.
The comparison that makes 50% legible is the rest of the city. In the same window, Zuni Cafe showed a table on 83% of dates and Rich Table on 73%, while Four Kings in Chinatown managed 20%. Saison is the middle case, which is the most actionable case, because half the month is reachable if you know which half.
Then there is the number that tells you something a coverage count never could. A party of four had a table on 16 of the 30 dates, a 53% rate, against 63% for a party of two. Four-tops opened more often than two-tops. That inverts the usual advice about shrinking your party to get in, and it comes out of 205,047 availability checks on this one restaurant rather than out of a general rule about tasting menus.
We watch 284 restaurants in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago. That is a short list next to the services that advertise tens of thousands, and it is the reason we can say what Saison actually does on a Wednesday instead of confirming that it exists.
Saison books through OpenTable on a rolling 30-day window, one date at a time. In our tracking the far edge of that window was bookable 29 days out, and the very next night was bookable too, so the calendar is live along its whole length rather than only at the leading edge.
Saison's own reservations page says dinner is released at least one month out, by the 1st of the month prior, and that is the rule you will find repeated everywhere. Read it as a deadline rather than a drop time, because the two things fit together: across 205,047 checks the calendar filled in date by date rather than in one monthly batch. The 1st is when a month is promised to be out. It is not the only moment worth being present for.
What we can report is the hour. Across 28 release events observed on 16 separate days, new Saison dates appeared in the 8 PM hour, local time. That is a measurement of when inventory showed up in our checks, not a policy the restaurant has published, and the distinction matters enough to state every time.
The practical consequence is small and useful. If you want a specific Friday or Saturday, be in front of OpenTable in the evening 30 days out, because a prime weekend date is claimed in the hours after it lands. If your nights are flexible, the release hour is trivia, because there is already something open on half the calendar.
In two seatings, with a long dead zone between them. Of the 325,768 open slots we have logged at Saison, not one fell between 6:15 and 7:45 PM. Availability lives from 5:00 to 6:00 PM, then nothing, then from 8:00 to 9:00 PM. That is the signature of a kitchen running two turns, and it is the most useful single fact on this page.
The later seating is the bigger of the two, at 46,241 of those slots against 31,505 in the first. 8:15 PM alone accounted for 13,020 of them, more than any other time on the clock, and 8:30 PM is the next deepest inside that seating at 9,451. 9:00 PM is the last seat we have ever recorded here and carries 11% of all open slots on its own.
The first seating is deeper than you would guess for a restaurant at this level. 38% of open slots were before 6 PM, with 5:30 PM the richest of them at 76,240 slots and 5:00 PM the earliest we have seen offered. If you are willing to eat at 5:30, you are shopping in the least contested part of this calendar.
One clarification, because the numbers can look contradictory. 38% of Saison slots technically fall in the 7:00 to 8:30 PM prime window, but every one of them is 8:00 PM or later. A 7:30 PM table at Saison is not hard to get. In 325,768 logged slots, it has never been on offer at all.
Open slots cluster in two seatings, 5:00 to 6:00 PM and 8:00 to 9:00 PM, with nothing between 6:15 and 7:45 PM.
8:15 PM is the most frequently open time, at 13,020 of the 325,768 slots we have logged.
38% of open slots were before 6 PM, and 5:30 PM is the deepest pocket in that first seating.
11% were at 9:00 PM, the latest seat we have ever recorded here.
Wednesday, by a wide margin, and Saturday is the hardest night that exists. Across our full check history, 79% of Wednesday checks found a table and 76% of Tuesday checks did, against 47% on Saturday. Thursday sits at 74% and Friday at 53%.
Two nights do not exist here at all. Sunday and Monday have never shown an open table across 29,559 and 29,734 checks respectively, which is what a dark night looks like in our data. Any plan that starts with a Sunday at Saison starts with a night the calendar has never once offered.
Those weekday rates are historical, covering every check we have run rather than the current window, so read them as a ranking of nights against each other rather than as odds on a particular Wednesday. The 50% headline is the window as it stands now. Both numbers are real, and they answer different questions.
Put the two halves together and the easiest reservation at Saison is a Wednesday at 5:30 PM or 8:15 PM. The hardest is a Saturday at any hour, and a Saturday with four people is harder still, even though four-tops beat two-tops across the month as a whole.
Pick the half of the calendar that opens. That means a weeknight rather than a Saturday, one of the two real seatings rather than 7:30 PM, and three or four candidate dates rather than one, because the difference between Wednesday and Saturday in our history is 79% against 47%.
You do not need to catch a cancellation to eat at Saison, though cancellations are how a fixed date gets rescued. At 63% availability, most tables come straight off the daily roll and from seats that reopen through the month as other people's plans move. The hard part is being present at the moment a table exists, which nobody can do by hand across a whole month of evenings.
SnagRes watches Saison on OpenTable and texts or emails you the moment a table opens, including the 8:15 PM seat that comes back at an odd hour. 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 is exactly the practice New York wrote its 2024 reservation law against. We tell you a seat exists. You book it yourself, at the restaurant price.
If Saison is the occasion rather than the destination, the neighbors are worth knowing. Rich Table in Hayes Valley opened on 73% of dates but sends 49% of its slots past 9 PM, and Four Kings runs 97% of its availability at 9 PM or later on a 21-day window. Same city, three completely different booking problems.
Favor Wednesday and Tuesday, at 90% and 90% of historical checks, over Saturday at 46%.
Do not plan a Sunday or Monday. Neither has ever shown an open table in our checks.
Target 5:30 PM or 8:15 PM, since a 7:30 PM table has never appeared in 325,768 logged slots.
Consider going as four rather than two. A four-top had a table on 17 of 30 dates against 15 for a two-top.
Let an alert watch OpenTable so you learn the moment a Saison table actually opens, rather than checking at the wrong hour.
Keep reading: State Bird Provisions, a noon OpenTable release · Rich Table, open on 73% of dates · Why four-tops sometimes beat two-tops · Hardest SoMa reservations · How to get a Benu reservation
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Saison releases reservations 1st of prev. month, and its calendar runs about 30 days deep in our checks. At the last check a table for two was bookable on 63% of the dates in that window, so booking a few days ahead is usually enough.
Saison's calendar reaches 1 December on Sunday, 1 November, and each later date follows the same rule: 1st of prev. month. Hours are local to the restaurant.
SnagRes watches Saison, 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 Saison free, or SF dinner reservations, live, or last-minute tables in SF tonight.