Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 61,530,416 checks across 284 restaurants through 19 October 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
It depends on the restaurant, and the common advice to book a month ahead is wrong often enough to cost you tables. Across the 136 restaurants where we have watched releases, the window runs from 7 days ahead to 31. ADDA, Dhamaka, Don Angie and Naks release 7 days out, I Sodi and Bistrot Ha at 13, Monkey Bar and Bungalow around 20, while Essex and Le Bernardin stretch to 31. Check each restaurant individually rather than planning to one number.
Less than the reputation suggests. Of the 80 hard-to-book New York restaurants we track, 30 showed a bookable table on more than half the dates in their window at the last check, and 19 on 70% or more. The genuine difficulty is concentrated: 22 showed a table on 0% of dates, and five of those have never shown one at all in tens of thousands of checks each.
Both are hard, but not equally. Carbone showed a table on 6% of dates for a party of two and 10% for four, and we have watched it release dates at 10:00 AM across 581 observed release events, 30 days ahead. The Polo Bar has never shown a single open date in 644,820 checks, so the only routes there are a cancellation or a relationship. Being a visitor does not make either harder, but a short trip gives you fewer chances.
For the hardest rooms, yes, because the release is often the only moment a table exists and it can fall before you travel. For the majority it is not urgent: 30 of the 80 New York rooms we track were bookable on most dates, and several of the most decorated, including Per Se, on every date in the window. Sorting your list into those two groups before you leave is the single most useful thing you can do.
There is no single time. Of the 75 New York rooms where we have seen enough release events to name an hour, 20 add their dates at midnight, 13 at 10:00 AM and 11 at 9:00 AM. Monkey Bar goes at 9:00 AM, Carbone and Via Carota at 10:00 AM, Bungalow at 11:00 AM, Ha’s Snack Bar at noon, Tatiana at 1:00 PM, Don Angie at 3:00 PM. All times are New York time, which matters if you are planning from another timezone.
We would not, and New York legislated against the model in 2024. TableSwap charges $75 per successful reservation, and a table held in someone else’s name can fall apart at the host stand. An alert service is the version that leaves you in control: SnagRes watches 284 restaurants across Resy, OpenTable, Tock and SevenRooms, texts you when a date opens, and never books or resells a table itself.
Tuesday through Thursday. At the 79 restaurants where the weekday gap is at least ten points, 58 are easiest between Monday and Thursday, with Thursday leading at 23 rooms and Wednesday at 20, while Saturday is the hardest day at 20. Lilia showed a table on 87% of Wednesdays against 20% of Saturdays. Monday is worth avoiding despite its reputation, since it is the hardest day at 16 restaurants.
The advice a visitor gets about New York restaurants is written by people who live here and have absorbed a decade of folklore about how impossible everything is. Some of it is true. Most of it is not, and believing all of it will cost you dinners you could have had.
We check the booking calendars of the 80 hardest-to-book restaurants in New York continuously, across Resy, OpenTable, Tock and SevenRooms, and the record now runs to 61,530,416 availability checks. At the last check, 30 of those 80 had a bookable table on more than half the dates in their visible window. Not the easy places: these are the rooms that appear on hardest-reservation lists.
The city average is 39% of dates bookable for a party of two, which is lower than San Francisco's 62% across the 62 rooms we track there, so New York's reputation is earned in aggregate. What the average conceals is that the difficulty is not spread evenly. It is stacked at one end.
The useful way to plan a trip is to stop treating New York as one difficulty and sort it into three. A handful of rooms are genuinely closed to planning. A larger group needs you to be awake at a specific minute. And a surprising number are simply available, including some of the most decorated restaurants in the country.
Tier one is open. Nineteen of the New York restaurants we track showed a table on 70% or more of their dates at the last check. Per Se, three Michelin stars and the room most people name when they say the word impossible, was bookable on every single date in its window, as were César, Essex, Shinzo Omakase and Sushi Hayashi Williamsburg. Casa Mono, Cecchi's and Golden Steer Steakhouse NYC all sit at 97%, Oberon at 43%. For these, planning means opening the app and booking. That is the whole strategy.
Tier two is the drop. Twenty-two New York rooms showed a table on 0% of dates, which does not mean nobody eats there. It means the tables are taken within seconds of release, so the only reliable moment is the release itself. This tier needs a calendar entry, not a browsing session.
Five of them have never shown us a table at all. The Polo Bar has not produced one open date in 644,820 checks, 4 Charles Prime Rib in 74,910, The Ambassadors Clubhouse in 39,690, The Corner Store in 263,279 and The Eighty Six in 266,486. If one of those is the reason for your trip, plan the trip around something else and treat the table as a bonus.
Tier three sits in between: available sometimes, gone often, worth checking repeatedly rather than once. Lilia at 63%, Le Bernardin at 61%, L'Artusi at 47%, Penny at 37%, Dhamaka at 23%, Via Carota at 0%, Carbone at 0%. A single look tells you almost nothing about these, because the answer changes through the day.
Just book it: Per Se, César, Essex, Shinzo Omakase, Sushi Hayashi Williamsburg, Casa Mono, Cecchi's.
Be there at the drop: 4 Charles Prime Rib, Don Angie, I Sodi, Monkey Bar, Torrisi, Tatiana, Jeju Noodle Bar, Ha's Snack Bar.
Keep checking: Lilia, Le Bernardin, Penny, Dhamaka, Via Carota, Le Veau d'Or, Thai Diner, Carbone.
Almost every guide tells a visitor to book a month ahead. For a large share of New York restaurants that advice is simply wrong, and following it means arriving at the calendar on a day when there is nothing to take.
Across the 136 restaurants where we have watched enough releases to measure it, the window runs from 7 days ahead to 31. ADDA, Dhamaka, Don Angie and Naks release only 7 days out. I Sodi, Bistrot Ha and COTE 550 sit at 13, Penny, Oriana, Claud and L'Artusi at 14, Semma at 15. Monkey Bar, Bungalow and Ha's Snack Bar open around 20 days ahead, while Essex, Le Bernardin and Huso stretch to 31. A traveller who books everything thirty days before the trip is far too early for several of these and too late for others.
The hours differ too, and they are not all sensible. Of the 75 New York rooms where we have seen enough release events to name an hour, 20 add their dates at midnight, 13 at 10:00 AM and 11 at 9:00 AM, with the rest scattered through the day. Monkey Bar has released at 9:00 AM across 273 observed events. Carbone, Via Carota, Lilia and Torrisi all cluster at 10:00 AM, Carbone across 300 events and Via Carota across 256. Bungalow goes at 11:00 AM, Ha's Snack Bar at noon, Tatiana at 1:00 PM, Don Angie at 3:00 PM, and Bistrot Ha, Jeju Noodle Bar, Minetta Tavern and Golden Diner at midnight.
Those are New York times, which for a visitor from London or Los Angeles means the drop lands in the middle of your night or the middle of your working day. Convert before you commit, because a plan that requires you to be alert at an hour you will actually be asleep is not a plan.
Check each restaurant's own window before you plan around it. Seven to thirty-one days is the real spread.
Convert the release time into your own timezone before you commit to being awake for it.
A midnight New York drop is 5:00 AM in London and 9:00 PM the previous day in Los Angeles.
A 10:00 AM New York drop, the most common hour after midnight, is 3:00 PM in London and 7:00 AM in Los Angeles.
For the tier-two restaurants there are exactly two ways in, and only one of them survives a trip that is already booked.
The first is the release. If your dates fall inside the window, be on the platform at the exact minute, logged in, with your party size already selected. This works, and it is the only method that produces a table on demand rather than by luck.
The second is a cancellation, which is how most people actually get into these rooms. Tables come back at every hour, usually because a deposit deadline passed or a plan changed, and they are gone in minutes. There is no skill in catching one, only attention, and no visitor is going to spend their trip refreshing a booking page. This is the specific problem SnagRes was built for: something watches, and you get a text when a table appears.
A word on the services that offer to do more than watch. TableSwap charges $75 per successful reservation, which is the practice New York's 2024 reservation law was written to stop, and a table booked in someone else's name is a conversation you do not want to have at the host stand on your one night in the city. SnagRes never books, holds or resells a table. It tells you, and you book it yourself in your own name.
The honest caveat is that a cancellation is not a plan. If a particular restaurant is the reason for the trip, book what you can get and treat the alert as an upgrade rather than the strategy.
A few adjustments move the numbers more than any amount of persistence.
Party size matters, but not in the direction almost every guide claims. We measure availability separately for two and for four, and across the 284 restaurants with both figures the average is 49% for a party of two and 50% for a party of four. Four is not harder. At some rooms it is markedly easier: Cote sits at 0% for two and 93% for four, Minetta Tavern at 42% and 77%, Le Bernardin at 61% and 77%. Ten rooms show nothing at all for two and still have four-tops, including Torrisi, Semma and Monkey Bar.
Midweek is real, and it is more specific than avoiding the weekend. At 79 restaurants where the gap between the easiest and hardest weekday is at least ten points, 58 are easiest between Monday and Thursday, with Thursday leading at 23 rooms and Wednesday at 20. Saturday is the hardest day at 20 of them. Lilia showed a table on 87% of Wednesdays against 20% of Saturdays. Monday is not the soft night people assume: it is the hardest day at 16 restaurants.
Then flex the hour, which is the cheapest change of all. Across the 132 restaurants where we sample at the time level, prime time between 7:00 and 8:30 PM is an average of 26% of everything we see open, while 33% of openings fall before 6:00 PM and 25% at 9:00 PM or later. Cote's most frequently open slot is 11:00 PM. Via Carota's is 3:00 PM. A visitor with an open afternoon has an advantage a local with a job does not.
And know the platform before the release rather than during it. Of the 80 New York rooms we track, 54 are on Resy, 11 on SevenRooms, 9 on OpenTable and 6 on Tock. Don Angie and Red Hook Tavern are OpenTable, The Corner Store and Semma are SevenRooms, Per Se and Jungsik are Tock. Discovering that at 8:59 AM costs you the drop.
Run the search for four as well as two. Ten rooms that show nothing for two have tables for four.
Aim Tuesday through Thursday rather than simply avoiding Friday and Saturday.
Ask for a time before 6:00 PM or after 9:00 PM, where most of the supply is.
Confirm the platform first: 54 Resy, 11 SevenRooms, 9 OpenTable, 6 Tock among the rooms we track.
Bar seats and counters are frequently bookable when the dining room is not, and at many of these rooms the food is identical.
A visitor does not need a list of every restaurant in America. You need to know which of the fifteen names on your own list will actually have a table while you are here, and that is a different product from a large directory.
Table Alert advertises 62,198 restaurants. We watch 284, all of them in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, and that is the reason we can tell you that Monkey Bar has released dates at 9:00 AM across 483 observed release events, that 95% of what opens there is before 6:00 PM, or that The Polo Bar has not shown one open date in 644,820 checks. Those sentences require having asked the same small set of rooms the same question every fifteen minutes for months. Nobody watching 62,198 restaurants has them for any of yours.
It also means we will say what we do not know. We do not see walk-in seats, bar stools held back from the calendar, or the table a manager keeps for a regular, so the phone is still the right tool for those. We do not know whether a room is worth your evening. And we do not book, which means the list you get from us is a list of tables that were genuinely open, not an inventory somebody is holding.
If San Francisco is the other half of the trip, the numbers there are kinder: 44 of the 62 rooms we track were bookable on more than half their dates, and only 4 were at zero.
Measured data on booking New York restaurants from out of town: which famous rooms are actually available, which need the drop, and why the booking window is seven to thirty-one days rather than thirty.
Keep reading: What to book before you fly · Two against four, restaurant by restaurant · Booking for six or more · Booking a table for one · Do you even need a reservation? · Which tables are hardest right now
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SnagRes checks 284 hard-to-book restaurants across four cities and alerts you when one opens. Watching one is free and no card is needed: watch a table free in New York City, or last-minute tables in NYC tonight.