Nobody likes being told “no”, particularly when it’s a restaurant doing the telling. We’re steeped in the fallacy that “the customer is always right”, that even when it’s obvious there are no tables up for grabs in the near (and sometimes distant) future, we can feel diddled and ready to ineffectually threaten to take our business elsewhere. It’s not logical but it is deflating to have your dining plans thwarted.

Sure, there may be some diddling. There are busy restaurants that always keep a table free for last-minute VIPs, but most of the hardest-to-get-into diners are actually fully booked. And while there have always been these demand-exceeding-supply situations in Australia’s restaurant scene – talk to anyone who battled to get a table at Gay Bilson’s Berowra Waters Inn in the 1980s or George and Mirka Mora’s Café Balzac in the 1960s – it does seem that right now the inability to secure a booking when you want one is more prevalent than ever. News late last year of a scalping situation at six-seat Chae seemed to indicate that we might be entering unchartered waters.

In some ways we are. The post-lockdown restaurant world has a host of new challenges to getting tables in our most sought-after diners. Skill and staff shortages, both back and front of house, have forced many restaurants to reduce their opening hours. Many restaurants are now opening with just a small number of seats, both to get around the staffing issues and to have more control over how they operate.

Lockdown turbo-charged already existing discussions about work-life balance in the restaurant industry. Many restaurant owners came to realise that their staff and business could be healthier, happier and still solvent with dramatically reduced hours, perhaps just opening for lunch four days a week, like Heathcote restaurant Chauncy, or three lunches and one dinner, like the much-lauded Tedesca Osteria on the Mornington Peninsula.

There are examples right across the country where securing a table has become the equivalent of Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket.

In Perth, it’s 30-seat Marumo where the three-month supply of bookings for owner-chef Moe Oo’s excellent value omakase menus are usually snapped up 15 minutes after they’re released. It’s a similar situation for those who want to eat at Joy, the 10-seat Japanese-influenced restaurant run by chefs Sarah and Tim Scott in Brisbane’s so-hot-right-now Fortitude Valley.

Though not quite as cutthroat, securing a booking for chef Justin James’s exquisite degustation menus at Adelaide’s Restaurant Botanic can take several months of forward planning and/or a willingness to compromise about when you’re willing to eat. The recent addition of Friday lunch to the schedule may make things a little easier.

Seemingly impossible bookings are even more prevalent in the larger restaurant landscapes of Melbourne and Sydney.

In Melbourne, it’s places like Chae, Tedesca Osteria and the revitalised Vue de Monde that have punters tearing their hair out when they realise some waiting lists have hundreds of people in the queue.

In Sydney, no-bookings sake specialist Ante is always jammed for the four services it runs each week, and there are similar bunfights for lunch tables at Clam Bar, Totti’s Bondi outpost and the CBD’s Ragazzi. Giving off even more of a Wonka vibe, the six seats for Sokyo’s omakase experience are allocated via ballot.

It’s best to take a deep breath, consider your options (smaller groups, earlier weeknights and late and early start times are good places to start) and treat the whole thing like a game – the thrill of the hunt and all that. And when you do achieve the impossible, imagine how good the sense of achievement will make you feel.