How to Get a Reservation at minibar by José Andrés (Washington DC)

minibar by José Andrés is twelve seats at a communal counter at 855 E Street NW in Penn Quarter, and for a room that small it carries an enormous amount of weight. The restaurant describes itself as a two Michelin starred study in avant garde cooking, an imaginative and progressive tasting menu built on art and science as much as tradition and technique, and its own press page collects a James Beard Outstanding Chef award for minibar alongside a number one finish in Washingtonian’s hundred very best. Two seatings of twelve run each evening, which means roughly twenty four people in the entire city eat this menu on any given night. That arithmetic, not the cooking, is what makes the booking hard. Here is how getting one of those seats actually works, as of September 2026.

The counter is sold, not reserved

minibar is not on Resy and it does not take an ordinary table booking. Its own reservations page sends you to OpenTable, where the counter is listed as a prepaid Chef’s Counter ticket, and the single line on its FAQ that decides everything is written in capitals: reservations are accepted one calendar month at a time, starting at noon EST on the first of each month. Take that literally, because it is unusual. Nothing rolls here. There is no window creeping forward a night at a time, no date quietly appearing thirty days out while you are asleep. At midday Eastern on the first, the whole of the following month becomes bookable in one go, and until that minute those dates do not exist on OpenTable at all. A ticket covers a party of one to four, the menu is $375 per personbefore beverage, tax and service, and every guest at the counter has to be sixteen or older with physical ID. Wine is priced separately, with José’s Pairing at $225 per guest and the Bespoke Pairing at $550. If you want the general theory of timed openings and how a monthly calendar behaves differently from a nightly one, it is in when restaurant reservations open.

Why a whole month at once is harder than a nightly opening

A rolling window spreads competition thin. Each morning a single new date appears, a handful of people want that one specific night, and everyone else waits their turn. minibar does the opposite. Every seat it will sell for an entire month goes live in the same minute, so every person who wants a Saturday in that month, every visitor planning a trip around it, every local marking an anniversary, and every out of town diner who has been reading about the place for a decade all arrive at the same page at the same second. Prime Friday and Saturday seatings are the first to go, and because the pool of seats is so shallow, being four minutes late is functionally the same as being four days late. The upside of the format is that it is completely predictable. You do not have to guess a hidden hour or watch a calendar for weeks, because the restaurant tells you the exact minute to be ready, twelve times a year. Everything else about getting in is downstream of showing up for it.

What all sales are final does to the cancellation angle

Most hard restaurants leak. A free cancellation deadline twenty four or forty eight hours before service pushes returned tables back onto the platform in a predictable cluster, which is why patient people so often eat at supposedly sold out rooms. minibar closes that path on purpose. Its FAQ states that all sales are final, that the restaurant cannot cancel your ticket or reschedule it for another night, and that tickets are instead transferable to other guests. In practice a diner who cannot make it hands the seat to a friend rather than giving it back, so far less inventory returns to the public listing than at a comparable Michelin room. That does not make near term checking worthless, since parties do shrink and plans do collapse and a returned seat can appear at any hour, but it does mean you should not build your evening around one. At minibar the month going on sale is where nearly all the supply lives. For how this compares with the rest of the city’s hardest tables, most of which do behave like normal reservation rooms, see the hardest restaurants to book in Washington DC.

Three other doors into the same building

The twelve seat counter is the famous one, and it is also the only part of the operation with a ticket queue. The rest is considerably more approachable:

• barmini. The cocktail side of the house books on OpenTable as its own separate listing, opens roughly one month in advance, and its FAQ says walk ins are welcome when there is availability, though seating is limited enough that reservations are recommended. Bookings run an hour and a half for a la carte and two hours for a cocktail flight, and everyone has to be twenty one or older. It is the realistic same week answer if you want the José Andrés avant garde sensibility without a month of planning, and it is a rare thing in this category, since counters like this almost never have a walk in option at all, as covered in whether hard restaurants take walk-ins.
• José’s Table. A private dining room next to the kitchen, built for a single party of up to six, with access to the newest creations and rare wine pairings. The restaurant recommends groups of four to six and lists it as its own bookable experience, separate from the counter tickets, so it does not compete with the noon opening on the first in the same way.
• A full buyout. Seven to twelve guests can take the counter outright, with the option to seat another six at José’s Table. The restaurant asks for at least forty five days notice and handles these through its concierge address rather than any platform, so this is an email, not a booking page.

Being ready for noon on the first

Everything you can control happens before the minute the month opens, so treat the first as a small operation. Have an OpenTable account already created and a card already saved, because a prepaid ticket is a checkout, and a checkout is where people lose seats they had in hand. Know which of the two seatings you want and which nights you would accept, in order, before you look at the calendar, since the counter is communal and there is no table to negotiate over. A party of two is the easiest size to place against a twelve seat room, and the ticket caps at four, so a group of six belongs at José’s Table instead. Decide your month in advance as well: if you want a night in December, the day that matters is the first of November, and if you miss it, the next honest attempt is a whole month away rather than tomorrow morning. Dietary needs go to the concierge email as early as possible, because the kitchen’s ability to adapt a menu like this one is genuinely limited. And bring physical ID for everyone at the counter, because sixteen and over is stated as a requirement rather than a preference. If you want to see how a sibling José Andrés counter handles the same problem with a different platform and a far longer runway, the guide to é by José Andrés in Las Vegas covers a three month ticket cycle rather than a monthly one.

Automating the watch

Every path above reduces to the same instruction: be looking at the exact second a seat exists. For minibar that is a known minute twelve times a year, plus the occasional odd hour when a party changes and something comes back to the listing. SeatSwiper watches the minibar listing on OpenTable, your date range and your party size, around the clock, and books the moment a seat is there to book. It books on your own OpenTable account, in your own name, and nothing is resold or transferred. Set it once and leave it alone. The first booking is free, then it is a flat $5 charged only when it actually gets you the seat, with no subscription, and if you want it standing watch on a sold out date in case one comes back, starting that watch costs $1. Two honest limits, since this is a harder target than most: it covers Resy, SevenRooms and OpenTable only, and against twelve seats going on sale at a fixed minute it can lose a race, so it is a far better watcher than any person with a browser open but never a guarantee. If the counter stays shut to you this month, barmini is still bookable a month out and still takes walk ins when it has the room.