Sean Abrams

For a city built on 8:30pm dinner reservations followed by “one more drink” at several different neighborhood bars, New York has been acting a little suspicious lately. People look more rested, seem weirdly hydrated and are increasingly content eating dinner while the sun is still up. Going out for the night earlier and turning in at a decent time has almost become modus operandi around town. To put it simply: the 6pm reservation is no longer just something you book before a Broadway show or because your parents are in town. For plenty of younger New Yorkers, a table before 7pm is just… dinner. The numbers back that up. OpenTable told Time Out New York that 6pm to 6:59pm was the most popular dining hour in New York City in 2025, up 12 percent year over year. Even earlier slots have become more common: 5pm reservations were up 20 percent and 4pm ones increased by 16 percent between 2024 and 2025. In a consumer survey, 45 percent of New Yorkers said they’d prefer “early dinner” in 2026, compared with 30 percent who chose “late dinner.” Yelp’s data tells a similar story. Tara Lewis, Yelp’s trend expert, told Yahoo that 60 percent of dinner reservations on the platform in 2024 and 2025 were made before 7pm, up from 51 percent in 2018, while the share of 8pm bookings dropped from 14 percent to 10 percent. The city is clearly still going out, it’s just getting started earlier and, as a result, the ideal night for many is starting to look a bit different from what it used to. Photo