Book Ahead at Durant’s Steakhouse, Phoenix

Durant’s takes its reservations on OpenTable, and every Reservations button on the restaurant’s own site at durantsaz.com opens the same OpenTable panel, so there is no second app to learn and no rumour to chase. The straight answer to the question you probably arrived with: no, you do not need to rush. This is a large, busy, much loved Phoenix institution rather than a scarce one, and outside the holidays a weeknight table is usually sitting there a week or two out. What you do need to do is actually book it, because the two things that catch people here are not speed. They are the day of the week (lunch happens on Fridays only) and the party size (the online widget stops well short of what the building can seat). Neither of those fixes itself the night you show up, and both are five minutes of work in September for a dinner in February.

How far ahead the book opens

Durant’s does not publish a booking window or a release hour anywhere on its site, and it does not need to: nothing here works like a timed release where a thousand people refresh at once. The house line in the restaurant’s own FAQ is simply that reservations are “not mandatory” but “highly recommended, particularly for larger parties or during peak dining hours,” and that you can secure a table by calling (602) 264-5967 or booking through the online system. So ignore any number somebody quotes you and measure the real edge yourself, which takes about twenty seconds. Open the OpenTable panel from the restaurant’s site, page the date picker forward until the days stop being clickable, and count from today to the last live one. That boundary is the honest answer, and it tells you whether your anniversary already exists as a bookable night or has simply not been created yet. If it has not, set a reminder for a fortnight out. The general theory of long calendars against short ones is in how far in advance to book a reservation, and the mechanics of timed openings are covered in when restaurant reservations open. One Phoenix quirk to keep in mind while you plan from out of state: Arizona does not observe daylight saving, so for most of the year the clock here is an hour off whatever you are comparing it against.

Which seatings go first

Service is narrower than the restaurant’s size suggests, and that is where the genuine competition lives. Dinner runs Monday through Thursday from 4:00 PM to 9:15 PM, Friday from 3:30 PM to 10:00 PM, and Saturday and Sunday from 4:00 PM to 10:00 PM. Lunch exists on Friday only, 11:00 AM to 3:30 PM. The bar opens with lunch on Fridays and otherwise at 4:00 PM. Read that back with a birthday in mind and the shape is obvious: a Tuesday lunch is not a thing you can book at any price, and a Monday through Thursday dinner that starts after about 8:00 PM is pushing against a 9:15 PM close.

Inside those hours, the slots that actually disappear are the ones everyone wants: Friday and Saturday between roughly 6:30 PM and 8:00 PM. Friday lunch is the second squeeze, because it is the only lunch of the week and downtown Phoenix works around it. There is no patio to compete for, since the restaurant states plainly that it does not offer standard outdoor seating, so the sought-after seats are indoors: the red leather booths in the main room, and a stool in the bar. Seasonally, the Valley runs upside down. January through April is high season, with spring training, the golf and everyone escaping a real winter, and the weekend prime slots in those months are worth claiming early. Thanksgiving is served and gets claimed weeks out, and the restaurant is closed on Christmas Day, which is a fact better learned now than on the phone in late December. July and August are the local quiet stretch and the easiest booking of the year.

Party size and where the online widget stops

This is the single most common false alarm at a restaurant like this one. An OpenTable party size dropdown has a ceiling that the house sets, usually somewhere around six or eight, and the moment you select a number the widget will not handle, the calendar goes quiet and returns nothing. It looks exactly like a sold out restaurant. It is not one. It is the booking tool declining to seat a group it was never configured to route, while the dining room behind it has tables that would take you comfortably. Check the top of the dropdown before you conclude anything, and if your number is above it, stop using the internet and pick up the phone.

Durant’s is unusually well set up for the large version of an occasion. The semi-private Kitchen Dining area seats up to 20 and looks into the working kitchen, which is a genuinely good room for a milestone birthday. The Cellar Room is fully private for up to 24, or 16 around a single boardroom-style table, and it is the one to ask for when you want a door that closes. The bar itself and Jack’s Dining, named for founder Jack Durant, can also be booked for events. Those spaces are handled by the events team at guestservices@durantssteakhouse.com rather than through the public calendar, which is the real reason a group of fourteen finds nothing online: that booking was never meant to happen there. Event menus are settled in the same conversation.

If your date is already gone

First, call. A restaurant that tells you in its own FAQ to phone for reservations is a restaurant holding inventory a widget cannot see, and a Valentine’s Saturday that shows nothing online is frequently one where somebody can still find you a 6:00 PM or a 9:00 PM. Second, move one variable. Shifting from Saturday to Thursday, or from 7:00 PM to 5:00 PM, almost always opens the date at a place whose difficulty is concentrated in two hours of two nights.

Third, wait for the give-back. Occasion tables booked far ahead are exactly the ones that later stop working, and plans collapse in a predictable rhythm: a few days out as the week firms up, the morning of, and in the last couple of hours before service. Those seats return to OpenTable the second they are released, which is why a night that read full in December is often bookable in the first week of February. The etiquette and the mechanics are in restaurant cancellation policies, and the same courtesy applies to you: cancel inside OpenTable rather than quietly not turning up, which costs you nothing and hands the booth to somebody else. If none of that lands your night, the wider metro picture is mapped in the hardest restaurants to book in Phoenix, and the same ownership group runs Steak 44 a few miles north, which is the genuinely contested version of a Phoenix steakhouse table.

Why people book this room for an occasion

Durant’s opened in 1950 and has been doing the same thing on North Central ever since: crimson booths, low light, a bar that has outlived several versions of this city, and the famous back door where guests park, walk in through the kitchen on red floor mats past the line cooks, and arrive in the dining room having already had the best entrance in Phoenix. It closed for a ten month restoration and reopened in December 2025 for its 75th anniversary under the Mastro family and Scott Troilo, the group behind Steak 44, Ocean 44 and Dominick’s, with the kitchen rebuilt and the room deliberately left alone. The menu is old-school on purpose: Chef Lupino’s meatballs, fried deviled eggs, oysters Rockefeller, slow-roasted prime rib, strawberry shortcake at the end. Dress accordingly, because the house asks in writing for no athletic wear, no printed t-shirts, no hats or visors, and says collared shirts and sports coats are always appreciated. Valet and self-parking, and the building is fully accessible.

Booking it once and forgetting about it

The best outcome here is boring. Choose the night, confirm the day of week actually has a service, take whatever time you can get, and stop thinking about it. If the exact slot you wanted is spoken for, the one part a person handles badly is the waiting: nobody checks OpenTable every evening for four months to see whether the 7:00 PM booth on a February Saturday has come back. SeatSwiper does that part, watching the restaurant, date range and party size you specify across Resy, SevenRooms and OpenTable and booking the moment something opens, on your own account and in your own name. First booking is free, then a flat 5 dollars only when it actually books you a table, with no subscription. It covers those three platforms and nothing else, and it can lose a race for a single seat. More in how SeatSwiper works. At a room like Durant’s, though, the honest advice is simpler than any of that. Book the table, then go and enjoy walking in through the kitchen.