How to Get a Reservation at Sushi Kashiba (Both Ways In)

Sushi Kashiba is Seattle’s most famous sushi counter, and the only hard table in the city that makes you pick which race you want to run. Shiro Kashiba, who trained in Tokyo and opened Seattle’s first full Edomae counter, keeps most of the seats at his Pike Place Market flagship off the internet entirely. A few counter seats per seating go up on OpenTable 30 days ahead; the rest are won standing on the sidewalk at 86 Pine St, in a line diners report forming around 3:30 in the afternoon. Two races, one restaurant, and most people only know about the first. Here’s the honest guide, as of July 2026.

One counter, two books

The counter runs three seatings a night, at 5:00, 7:00, and 9:00pm, each lasting 1 hour 45 minutes. Per the restaurant’s own answers in its Tripadvisor FAQ, only a few counter seats per seating are reservable online; the majority are deliberately held back for walk-ins. The dining room is a different story: tables there are bookable on OpenTable too, and they are meaningfully easier to get. So when the reservation page shows nothing at the counter, that is not the restaurant being full. That is the restaurant telling you where the other seats live. Seattle has a real walk-in culture even at its hardest rooms, and it shows up in pieces all over town: Il Nido keeps its bar for walk-ins with full dinner service, Spinasse holds first-come counter seats, The Pink Door sets aside part of the room every night. But nobody else in the city puts the majority of its marquee seats into a physical line. Kashiba does, which is why this page is really two guides stapled together.

Race one: the 30-day OpenTable sprint

Kashiba books on OpenTable, and the restaurant has said in its own Yelp Q&A and Tripadvisor answers that reservations open 30 days in advance. What it has never published is the exact time of day a new date appears. That matters, because OpenTable venues generally roll dates open one day at a time rather than in one synchronized morning rush, and with no stated hour you cannot set a single alarm and win (the platform-by-platform mechanics are in the Resy vs SevenRooms vs OpenTable guide). The realistic playbook: count back 30 days from your target date, check early that morning, and keep checking through the day. Remember what you are racing for: a few counter seats per seating, not a whole book, so the online sprint at Kashiba is tighter than its OpenTable listing makes it look. If the counter is gone, take a dining room table without shame; it is the same kitchen and the same room, minus the theater of watching Shiro’s crew work. The venue’s own page at sushikashiba.com/reservations routes to the same inventory, and reservations@sushikashiba.com takes questions the calendar cannot answer.

Race two: the 3:30pm sidewalk line

This is the half of the system the internet cannot see, and it is where most of the counter is actually won. The protocol is consistent across The Infatuation’s review and years of Yelp Q&A: get to 86 Pine St, Suite 1, in Pike Place Market and join the line before the 5pm open. Diners report the queue forming from about 3:30pm, roughly 90 minutes ahead. When the doors open, the host works down the line: the first parties get first-seating counter spots, and everyone behind them is told a time to come back for the 7:00 or 9:00 seating. That second mechanic is the underrated one. You are not standing on a sidewalk for four hours; you are investing 90 minutes to claim a seat, and if you land a later seating you get handed an evening in Pike Place Market to kill, which is about the best waiting room in the Pacific Northwest. Two practical notes. Hours run roughly 5 to 9 or 9:30pm, and as of mid-2026 Yelp shows the restaurant closed on Tuesdays, so confirm the current schedule before you commit; a 90-minute wait outside a dark room is the worst outcome in this guide. And treat the line like the race it is: every minute earlier you arrive is a real position gained, because first-seating counter spots go strictly in line order.

Will Shiro himself be behind the counter?

Sometimes, genuinely. As of 2026, Seattle Refined reports that Shiro Kashiba still works the counter about three days a week. Which days is not published anywhere, so treat an evening with Shiro slicing in front of you as a bonus, not a bookable outcome. The counter runs the same Edomae program either way, and his chefs trained under the man himself.

If you strike out: the Kashiba family tree

The overflow plan is unusually good here, because Shiro Kashiba built it himself. Shiro’s Sushi in Belltown, his original restaurant, books on Resy with a 30-day window and runs counter seatings at 4:30, 6:45, and 8:45pm, with the omakase at $140 and a table chef’s course at $85, per shiros.com and its active Resy listing. Being on Resy means its mechanics are more predictable than the flagship’s; how those openings work is covered in when Resy reservations open. On the Eastside, Takai by Kashiba in Bellevue books on OpenTable and spares you the trip into the market entirely. And if what you want is a lottery-grade Seattle counter rather than Kashiba specifically, Sushi by Scratch Restaurants: Seattle runs a completely different system, opening a whole month of seats at once. The Seattle hard-tables guide has the full landscape.

Automating the online half

I will be straight about the split: no app can stand in the Pike Place line for you. The sidewalk race is yours. The online race is the automatable one, and it is exactly what SeatSwiper was built for: it watches your dates and party size on Resy, SevenRooms, or OpenTable around the clock and books the instant a table appears, whether that is the moment Kashiba’s 30-day window opens or a canceled counter seat resurfacing at 1am on a Wednesday. It books on your own account, in your name. Set it once and walk away; if the online seats never shake loose, you still have the line at 3:30. First booking free, then a flat $5 only when it actually books you the table.