How To Book A Table At An Impossible-To-Get-Into Restaurant

This post originally appeared on Fathom.

Dear Fathom: I travel for the food. And I can't stand hearing, "we're booked" when I call for a reservation: I only have two nights in London and I want to eat at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal.

Also, how can I be treated like a regular when it's my first (and probably only) time someplace?

We feel your pain and know the frustration. So we turned to the most gracious restaurateur we know, Rita Jammet, who used to own the much-missed French restaurant La Caravelle in Manhattan and now runs La Caravelle Champagne. Born in Saudi Arabia, raised in Lebanon and Switzerland, Rita is like the godmother of the New York food world, and she knows the universal secrets of the reservation book. We gave her a few situations to handle. (And the next time you have a burning travel dilemma, Ask Fathom. We're here to help.)

Let's break this down into six easy tips.