Three apps cover most of San Francisco's difficult tables, and they do not work the same way at all. Resy holds a table for you. Tock sells you a ticket. OpenTable competes on sheer volume and has spent the past two years pulling marquee Bay Area rooms across. That difference decides whether your weekend involves refreshing at 10 a.m., paying several hundred dollars a month in advance, or simply typing in a party size on a Thursday and getting lucky. This is how each one behaves in this city, and who is on which.
Most of the frustration of booking in San Francisco comes from aiming at the wrong app. Karpo will tell you which platform a specific restaurant is on today and what its release rule is, before you set an alarm for nothing.
OpenTable: the one that keeps winning
OpenTable's pitch to restaurants is reach, and it has worked. It has drawn across high-end Bay Area names including three-Michelin-star SingleThread in Healdsburg, Saison in San Francisco and Commis in Oakland. Inside the city the OpenTable column is now long: Che Fico, Nopa, State Bird Provisions, Zuni Cafe, Angler, House of Prime Rib, Foreign Cinema, Rich Table, Delfina, Ernest and Dalida all route their own reservation buttons there. So does Tadich Grill, which is the single most counterintuitive entry on the list, because it spent more than a century refusing reservations entirely and most older guides still say so. Che Fico is the exception on that list: it has been closed since a kitchen flue fire on 11 June 2026 and has announced no reopening date, so it cannot currently be booked on any platform.
The mechanics are the loosest of the three. There is usually no deposit, windows tend to run about 30 days, and cancellation costs you nothing at most rooms. The catches are quieter. Ernest, at 1890 Bryant Street, caps online parties at six and pushes anything larger to an event form. Arquet, the Ferry Building restaurant from Sorrel chef Alex Hong that opened on 17 October 2025 in the old Slanted Door space, serves dinner Wednesday to Sunday from 5 to 9 p.m. and releases each new date at midnight, 30 days ahead, which is an unusual hour and easy to miss. And The Happy Crane, at 451 Gough Street in Hayes Valley, is an OpenTable restaurant despite showing up on Resy lists constantly; it runs Tuesday to Saturday, 5 to 9 p.m., closed Sunday and Monday.
Resy: table-holding, on a 10 a.m. habit
Resy holds tables rather than selling seats, which means no money changes hands until you eat. The surviving San Francisco core is smaller than most lists suggest but very specific. Flour + Water at 2401 Harrison Street serves 5 to 9:30 p.m. daily and accepts walk-ins alongside bookings. Mister Jiu's at 28 Waverly Place releases 30 days out at 10 a.m. Pacific on a rolling basis and will not take reservations by phone or email at all. Rintaro at 82 14th Street runs a 28-day window opening at 10 a.m., closes Tuesdays, and takes its last seating at 10 p.m. Newer additions include Esme at 311 Divisadero Street, which opened in late June 2026 with 32 seats and keeps a five-seat counter for walk-ins, and SAAM at 415 Brannan Street, which opened on 24 July 2026. Rose Pizzeria at 1 Clement Street and Song Wat at 312 Divisadero Street round out the easier end.
Tock: you are buying a ticket, not a table
Tock is where the tasting menus live, and the model is prepayment. Restaurant Naides at 708 Bush Street books exclusively through it: $235 a person plus a 20 percent service charge, taken at the point of booking, with availability released in monthly batches rather than rolling daily. It is closed Monday and Tuesday, serves 5:30 to 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday and 5 to 8 p.m. Friday through Sunday, and was added to the Michelin Guide's 2026 California selection for its modern Filipino tasting menu. Lazy Bear works the same way, releasing tickets on the 15th of each month at 10 a.m. at roughly $275 to $295 a head and opening Tuesday through Saturday only. Ju-Ni is also on Tock. The practical consequence is simple: on Tock a change of plan costs real money, so treat the booking like a concert ticket and check the transfer rules before you commit.
The fourth platform nobody lists
SevenRooms quietly takes a slice of the city and almost never appears in comparison pieces. Trick Dog uses it. So, now, does Side A, the Mission bistro at 2814 19th Street in the former Universal Cafe space, which was written up as a Resy opening when it launched in May 2025 and whose own site now sends bookings to SevenRooms instead. Worth knowing before you go: it serves Monday, Thursday and Sunday from 4 to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 4 to 11 p.m., with the kitchen opening at 5; The Coffee Movement runs the room from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on weekdays; and there is a $40 corkage per 750ml bottle with a two-bottle limit, plus a 6 percent surcharge on all sales.
The Amex wrinkle, and the rule of thumb
American Express owns both Resy and Tock, so the which-app question is partly a which-card question: cardholders get access to prime-time inventory across two of the three platforms. OpenTable's answer is scale, and for a normal weekend that scale usually wins. So: if you want flexibility and a table this week, start on OpenTable. If you want one specific famous room on one specific night, be on Resy at 9:59 a.m. Pacific, 28 to 30 days ahead. If it is a tasting menu, assume Tock, assume prepayment, and put the monthly release date in your calendar. Then check the restaurant's own site last, because Sons and Daughters has been pointing at different platforms in different months on its own reservations page, and it will not be the last to do that.
Most of these formats arrive with a wine pairing attached, and corkage rules make it easy to bring more. Please drink responsibly and arrange transport home before the last course.
Tags: #SanFrancisco #Resy #OpenTable #Tock #SevenRooms #Reservations #SFRestaurants #WeekendPlans #TastingMenu
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Ask Karpo first
Platform allegiance in San Francisco is not stable. Restaurants switch providers between seasons, release times shift, and a booking link copied from an article can be wrong within months. Rather than trusting a comparison table, ask Karpo which app a restaurant is on right now, what its release window is, and whether it is even open on the night you had in mind. It takes a moment and it saves the whole plan.
