Kisa NYC Reservations: Resy at Midnight, 15 Days Out, Walk-Ins

Kisa is a Korean set-meal diner at 205 Allen Street, on the corner of East Houston on the Lower East Side. The name comes from kisa sikdang, the casual diners in Korea where taxi and bus drivers eat, and the room leans into it: The Infatuation describes a snug beige dining room “where rotating fans and VHS tapes call forth the spirit of the early ’90s.” It opened in April 2024 from the team behind C as in Charlie, and the James Beard Foundation named it a 2025 Best New Restaurant semifinalist. Booking it is unusual, because most of the room cannot be booked at all: about two-thirds of the seats go to walk-ins, and only the rest go on Resy. One more check before you start. A Turkish restaurant called KISA at 195 Cuba Street in Wellington, New Zealand books on SevenRooms, and its booking page turns up in the same searches. This guide is about the Allen Street room and how it books as of November 2026.

Is Kisa on Resy?

Yes, and only Resy. The one booking link on kisaus.com is a Resy logo that opens Kisa’s Resy page, and the restaurant’s Instagram bio links to Resy as well. Kisa links to no other booking site, and the SevenRooms “Reservation at Kisa” page that ranks for this search belongs to the Wellington restaurant, not this one.

A lot of older pages still say you cannot book. The Infatuation’s review from May 2024 says “It’s walk-in only,” and the lowereastside.com listing still read “No reservations. Walk-ins only.” when I checked on November 7, 2026. Both are out of date. Kisa had opened a Resy book by September 2024, when its operations manager, Andrew Choi, told Resy the restaurant felt bad because “a lot of guests came from out of state, and they didn’t know about the line.” The line still exists. Resy now covers the other third.

When do Kisa reservations open?

At midnight Eastern, 15 days ahead, one new date each night. This is one of the few release rules that comes from the restaurant itself: Choi told Resy in September 2024 that reservations open “15 days in advance, and are released daily at midnight.” Two years on, the trackers say the same. SnagRes, whose Kisa page carries data as of November 6, 2026, says Kisa “releases reservations on Resy 15 days ahead, at 12:00 AM ET,” and that the calendar runs about 16 days deep in its checks, which is today plus 15. ReservationBooker and Snatchd both give 15 days at 12:00am. I could not read Kisa’s Resy page directly (it loads by script and came back empty), so the calendar edge below is SnagRes’s count, not my own look.

On Saturday, November 7, 2026, that puts the far edge at Sunday, November 22, with Monday, November 23 due at 12:00am tonight. A worked example: for dinner on Saturday, December 12, count back 15 days to Friday, November 27. The date opens at 12:00am that Friday, which is late on Thanksgiving night, so be signed in to Resy on Thursday, November 26 with your party size and times decided. For New Year’s Eve, a Thursday this year, the same count lands on Wednesday, December 16. Resy’s release hours vary a lot from one restaurant to the next; how they compare is in what time does Resy release reservations.

How hard is Kisa to book?

Harder for a set time than for a table. The two trackers that publish numbers on Kisa describe very different restaurants. Snatchd says dinner tables “typically sell out” in about 15 to 35 seconds, the fastest a three-top at 6pm on a Tuesday, gone in 10 seconds. SnagRes, which says it has made 875,949 checks of Kisa’s calendar, found this at its last look: “As of November 6, 2026, Kisa had a table for two open on every one of the next 16 days on Resy.” I trust SnagRes on the big question, because it gives a date and a sample size and a full calendar on one day is an observation, not an average. Snatchd’s figures read like timings of single slots, and a single 6pm slot can vanish in seconds on a night that still has a 9pm table.

SnagRes’s detail shows where the pressure is. By its count, a table for two “stays bookable about 3.5 days once it appears; a table for four, about 5 days,” and 9pm is the time that comes up most often. Prime time does come up: 19% of the open slots it logged fell between 7pm and 8:30pm, the window Choi called the busiest in 2024, when “everyone is finishing work.” Wednesday holds longest, about six and a half days. Choi’s own tip from 2024 still fits: “Usually, our 6 p.m. slots and our 9 p.m. slots stay open a little longer.” So expect a 7:30pm Friday for two to go within a few days of opening, and look to 9pm, 6pm or lunch for a table closer to the date.

Lunch, hours and the days to aim for

Kisa’s website, as of November 2026, lists lunch Wednesday to Sunday, 11am to 2:30pm, and dinner every day, 5pm to 10:30pm. Its Instagram bio gives the same lunch hours but says dinner runs to 11pm; the website is the safer number, so plan on a 10:30pm close. Monday and Tuesday are dinner only.

Lunch is the overlooked way in. When it started, in September 2024, it ran Friday to Sunday and was walk-in only. It now runs five days, and the trackers log Resy tables at lunch: SnagRes says open tables have run from 11am to 9:30pm and that 30% of the open slots it recorded were before 3pm, and Snatchd’s easiest observed slot was a three-top at 11am on a Wednesday. Walking in at lunch works too. Time Out’s critic tried it on a cold Saturday: “my friend and I were sat within seconds, arriving just a few minutes before noon.” In January 2025 Time Out put the most expensive lunch item at $19, well below the dinner platter.

Does Kisa take walk-ins?

Yes, and walk-ins are most of the room. Choi’s 2024 figures: 38 seats at about 18 tables, and “about two-thirds of the restaurant is first come, first served.” Time Out wrote in January 2025 that Kisa’s Resy page says the same, and SnagRes still describes the room that way in November 2026. Dinner doors open at 5pm, and in 2024 the first hour belonged to walk-ins: “People can join us for a walk-in right at 5 p.m., and our reservation books open at 6 p.m.” That rule may have changed. Snatchd’s timings include a Resy four-top at 5pm on a Saturday, so do not count on a reservation-free first hour.

Expect a list. Choi put the opening wait at “between 20 and 25 people,” busiest on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays, and Time Out’s critic, asking on a Friday night, was told a table for two would “maybe, just maybe, be available in two-and-a-half hours.” The routine, per The Infatuation: “just put your name in, then go for a stroll.” For a shorter wait, the Michelin Guide’s 2024 advice still makes sense: come on a Tuesday or Wednesday, 10 to 15 minutes before the 5pm opening, or closer to 9pm. Two people at 4:50pm on a Tuesday face a very different evening from four at 7:30pm on a Saturday. Other hard rooms where the door still works are in NYC hard restaurants that take walk-ins.

Party size, the $36 platter and the late-cancel charge

Kisa books parties of one to four and no larger. SnagRes puts it this way: “Kisa does not take parties larger than four, and every guest must order one platter.” Snatchd quotes the limit in the restaurant’s words: “We do not accept parties larger than 4 guests due to limited capacity in the restaurant.” A group of five or six has no booking route here. Split into two tables, or walk in and wait.

The platter is the meal. On the June 2026 menu at kisaus.com it is $36 a person, up from $32 when Kisa opened, for one of four mains: bulgogi, spicy pork, spicy squid, or sanchae bibimbap with mountain vegetables, to which you can add bulgogi or spicy pork for $8. Every platter comes with rice and the same set of banchan, listed as perilla seaweed soup, braised pork galbi, beef tartare, shrimp salad, cabbage namul, fried tofu, stir-fried fishcake and napa kimchi, with no substitutions. Early reviews praised bottomless banchan, but Time Out reported in January 2025: “While the restaurant initially offered free refills of banchan, that is no longer.” Drinks run from fruit wines and makgeolli to cheongju and soju, from $11 a glass, with Korean beer from $8. The Infatuation’s parting tip: “After your meal, be sure to use the coffee machine near the entrance.”

On cancelling, SnagRes reports: “Cancelling after 2pm on the day of the booking costs $15 per person.” It adds that the restaurant does not answer phone calls and that changes go through a reply to the Resy confirmation text. I could not read Kisa’s Resy note to confirm the charge, so read the policy Resy shows you before you confirm. A 2pm same-day cutoff is late next to the 24 hours many hard rooms use, which means tables can come back on the day itself; how other restaurants draw the line is in restaurant cancellation policies. Kisa opened with chef Simon Lee, who the Michelin Guide says came from Jua, a Korean tasting menu with a very different booking problem, covered in Jua NYC reservations.

Watching Kisa’s Resy calendar

Two moments decide most booked Kisa dinners: midnight 15 days before your date, when the date appears, and the hours before the 2pm line on the day, when people let go of tables they will not use. SeatSwiper watches Resy, SevenRooms and OpenTable, and Kisa books on Resy, so one watch covers both. Set the date, a party of up to four and the times you would take, set it once and walk away, and it books the table the moment one opens or someone cancels. It books on your own Resy account, in your name, for your own dinner, and nothing is resold or transferred. It can’t get your account banned, because it books one table on your own account and checks every few minutes, never nonstop. The first booking is free. After that it is a flat $5, charged only when it actually books the table, with no subscription. A cancellation watch on a date that is already full costs $1 to start, charged when the watch begins even if no table ever opens; that $1 is not covered by the free first booking and is not refunded, and the same $5 applies if the watch wins you the table. The honest limits: it only works on those three platforms, it needs your Resy login to book in your name, it can lose a race for a single table, and it cannot put your name on the walk-in list, which is where two-thirds of Kisa’s seats go.