Get off the waitlist

The new flex: Scoring a table at India's top restaurants. Good places sell out weeks in advance. Relax, it won't get as bad as NYC. Our chefs care about food, not VIP culture

- VIR SANGHVI

In the West (and especially in America) a restaurant reservation can be the social equivalent of a gold brick.

To be able to get a table at a top restaurant is a mark of status. People will wait weeks or months for a reservation. Some restaurants will operate a dual reservation system: Preferred customers (the rich or the famous) will be given a secret number to call when they need a booking. Ordinary punters will use the general number and will only be offered tables on weekdays, when business is slower.

For instance, when the New York restaurant, Daniel, had three Michelin stars, no tables for after 6.30pm were available on the normal reservation line. (Daniel has since been knocked down to one star and is no longer as desirable a destination.)

People now book tables on the internet, so top restaurants hold back some tables while putting the rest on the net. The tables they hold back go to select customers or (increasingly) to concierges at luxury hotels.

Inevitably, when technology changes, so do some of the rules of the game. Top restaurants will offer reservations for say, the next three weeks on the net. Every single table will be booked within an hour or even less. Some of these bookings will be made by scalpers who will then resell the reservations at a premium; the restaurant version of buying movie tickets in black.