We all love the idea of a city that never sleeps, with late-night options for dining and dancing into the wee hours. But your enthusiasm for a nocturnal foray doesn’t count for much if the restaurant you’re aiming for isn’t even open.
San Francisco tends to be a place where booking a late-night meal isn’t the norm, according to data released by food blog Chef’s Pencil. The party sometimes ends and restaurants close their doors while you’re still wanting to keep it going.
Across the world, many cultures eat dinner far later than in the U.S., so it’s easier to venture out and find dining and streets still full of people. For instance, in Cairo, the average last seating time is midnight! (It’s number one on the list.) The study looked at dinner reservation calendars for more than 4,400 restaurants in 89 cities worldwide, logging the last weekend seating times for each one. Then the cities were ranked based on the median value of the last seating time or last food order time.
In the U.S., the two cities that make it easiest for diners to find a late reservation are Miami and Las Vegas. They both have an average last seating time of 10:30pm. But in San Francisco, it seems like people are going to bed early (maybe it’s the healthy lifestyle) and not coming out in full force to take over the city. The average last seating time is 9pm, much earlier than any other North American city in the study. Globally, San Francisco ranks at 73 out of the 89 cities.
The international city with the earliest restaurant closing time? Auckland, New Zealand, where they closed up bookings at 8:30pm. That’s only a 13.5-hour flight from SFO, so if you leave now, you could be there for dinner.