How to Get a Reservation at Bungalow (NYC)

Bungalow is chef Vikas Khanna’s modern Indian restaurant at 24 First Avenue in the East Village, a few steps from the corner of 2nd Street. Since it opened in 2024 it has been one of the neighborhood’s hardest tables, the kind of dinner reservation that sells out in a minute or two the moment it becomes available. Khanna, who also earned a Michelin star at Junoon, fills the industrial room with hand-painted murals, elaborate wallpaper, framed family photographs, and a skylit back dining room, and calls the food "Indian country club cuisine." Add a glowing three-star New York Times review, a small footprint, and a citywide crowd chasing the yogurt kebabs and lamb chops, and you get a Resy listing that vanishes almost as fast as it posts. Here is how the booking actually works, and how to give yourself the best shot at the date you want.

How Bungalow’s Resy booking actually works

Bungalow books on Resy, and only on Resy. Reservations open on a rolling 20-day window: new dates are added to the calendar each morning at 11 a.m. Eastern, releasing the date exactly twenty days out. So if you want a Saturday three weeks from now, you are logging in twenty days before that Saturday, not thirty or sixty. If you have never worked a timed release like this, our guide on when restaurant reservations open walks through the pattern.

There is one more step most first-timers miss: Bungalow holds a prepaid deposit, around $25 per person, taken when you book and applied toward your final bill rather than charged on top. Have a valid card (or Apple Pay / Google Pay) already loaded in Resy before 11 a.m. so the payment step does not cost you the few seconds that decide whether you land the table. Dinner is the only service, starting at 5 p.m.

Why the table is so hard to get

Two things collide at Bungalow: very high demand and a genuinely small dining room. When the clock hits 11 a.m., prime slots between 6 and 9 p.m. can be gone in 60 to 80 seconds, and even off-peak times rarely last more than a few minutes. That is not a glitch, it is simply more people refreshing than there are chairs. We break down that vanishing-inventory feeling in why Resy tables disappear in seconds.

The Khanna name is a big part of it. His fans followed him from Junoon, the Times review sent a fresh wave, and the room itself, with its skylit back section and sought-after corner tables, has become a destination for anniversaries and out-of-town visitors. It sits alongside the city’s other tough Resy rooms, like Torrisi and the marquee names in our hardest restaurants to book in New York City guide.

The back doors: bar seats, walk-ins, and off-nights

You do not always need a prime-time reservation to eat here. A few angles work better than hammering the 11 a.m. release:

• The lounge and bar are first come, first served. Bungalow keeps a 26-seat lounge, including 8 high-top bar seats, with no reservation required. Arrive near the 5 p.m. open, put your name down, and order from the small-plates-and-dessert menu while you wait.
• Walk in early on a weeknight. The host will add you to a list for any no-shows, and a Tuesday-through-Thursday evening gives you a far better shot than a Friday or Saturday. Our do hard restaurants take walk-ins guide covers how to work a waitlist without hovering.
• Aim for the edges of the evening. The very first seating around 5 p.m. and the last tables near closing turn over more, and they are the slots most likely to still be open a few minutes after 11 a.m.
• Book a smaller party. Twos slot into the room far more easily than fours and sixes, so if your plans are flexible, a two-top opens up more available dates.

When cancelled tables come back

Because Bungalow charges a deposit and enforces a cancellation cutoff (reviewers cite roughly 48 hours of notice, so confirm the current terms when you book), plans change and seats return to the calendar. Two windows are worth watching. The first is that 48-hour mark before service, when guests cancel to protect their deposit. The second is the same-day stretch, when a last-minute conflict frees a table an hour or two before dinner.

Turning on Resy Notify puts you in line for these, though on a room this popular the alert list runs into the thousands, so a notification is a starting gun rather than a promise. The trouble is you still have to be at your phone, ready to pounce, at whatever random moment a seat comes back.

Stop refreshing at 11 a.m.

Here is the honest problem with the plan above: it asks you to be at your phone at exactly 11 a.m., twenty days before every date you might want, then to win a footrace against a few thousand other people, and then to do it all again for the cancellation windows. That is a lot of alarms for one dinner. The tips genuinely help, but the release speed and the deposit step mean even a prepared human misses far more often than they land. This is exactly the repetitive, clock-driven job worth handing off.

Automating the watch

SeatSwiper watches the exact Bungalow table you want, your date range, your party size, and your preferred times, around the clock, and books it the moment a seat opens, whether that is brand-new availability at the 11 a.m. window or a cancellation that reappears later. It books on your own Resy account, in your name, so nothing is resold and you walk in like any other guest. The pricing is simple: your first booking is free, then a flat $5 only when it actually lands you the table, with no subscription. Starting a cancellation watch on a seat that has already sold out costs $1 to begin. Be clear on the limits, too: SeatSwiper works on Resy, SevenRooms, and OpenTable only (Bungalow is Resy, so you are covered), it needs your reservation account connected, and because a single returned seat can draw several people at once, it can lose a race. It is a far more patient and faster watcher than any human, but it is never a guarantee.