In the past couple of years, we've travelled to various cities and used to chase restaurants with Michelin stars or popular ones with long queues. Unfortunately, the experiences have been mixed.

I can't forget the time when we were served burned bread in a Michelin starred restaurant in Paris or the basic cafeteria food we got on the Eiffel tower after waiting for almost 2 hours. These tourist traps made me realize the difference between highly ranked or popular restaurants against those preferred by locals.

We learned that reviews really do not lie as they represent real customers with real experiences. We told ourselves we would never queue up for a restaurant again especially when we are traveling.

I ate my words immediately when we queued up for this conveyor belt sushi restaurant. We got there at around 5pm and there were already more than 100 people in line in front of us. We made the strange decision to wait because it was early and we were desperate for sushi.

Little did we realize that it would take us more than 3 hours of waiting. There were several times we wanted to give up but the sunken cost was overwhelming. At around 8:30pm we finally got to sit down, vowing never to queue up for any restaurant ever again.

We ended up finishing 38 plates of fresh sushi and sashimi at an extremely low price taking the quality of the food into account (fatty tuna, unagi, overflowing salmon roe, salmon, fresh scallops, etc). Where we're from, this kind of food costs a fortune so we were quite overwhelmed by the sheer quality on offer. The service was also extremely quick, leading us to consume far more than we normally would. My husband looked pregnant in the end.

Despite the long wait, we left the place happily. However, we did re-learn a valuable lesson: never commit to wait for food. . unless it's this kind of food.

• Fang