You’ve booked the trip, chosen the hotel with the fluffiest bathrobes, and then, for any food-loving person, you’re onto making the all-important restaurant bookings. Whether you follow the stars (Michelin or celebrity), there’s an undeniable allure when it comes to wanting to experience the heights of cuisine that a culture can offer.

Naturally, if it were easy to get a seat at the table, it wouldn’t be nearly as haute an experience, but what happens when a restaurant is so hard to get into that it doesn’t accept booking requests from anyone other than regulars, or the seriously hooked up? How do you get into the world’s most exclusive restaurants?

With 2 and 1 Michelin stars respectively, Sushi Umi and Sushi Arai are a couple of Tokyo’s hottest tickets at the moment. Headed up by chefs Ryujiro Nakamura and Yuichi Arai two of the youngest sushi masters in Japan, the hype is real…but so is the fact that unless you’re a local regular, or you know a guy, you have a Sumo’s chance of fitting into an economy airline seat, getting in. Add to that the fact that Umi accommodates just 10 people and Arai, 8, these seats are worth more than just the ¥30, 000 price tag.

So when Nobu Melbourne announced earlier in the year that they were hosting not one, but both chefs at a series of dinners at their 100 seater restaurant, Japanese food fiends had their moment. Selling out 200 places in just three days, clearly punters considered the $395 price tag, a mere drop in the ocean for an experience that is essentially money can’t buy.

So what do you do when you can’t get into the real deal? Look out for collaboration events on social media, or sign up to those newsletters…but you still need to get in quick.