Pro tips: How to shop like a Michelin chef

We hit Tokyo with a group of Michelin-starred chefs, kicking off with sushi and beer for breakfast

By Melinda Joe

Our chefs get touchy-feely with some Tsukiji tentacles.

At 6 a.m. on an overcast morning in late May, I found myself fumbling with the pink shell of a raw amaebi shrimp at the Tsukiji fish market in central Tokyo.

Unlike the seven chefs I'd accompanied there, I'd stabbed my fingers repeatedly on the crustacean's spiny carapace before exposing its translucent flesh and popping the tail -- tiny black eggs and all -- into my mouth.

Toine Hoeksel, Erlantz Gorostiza, Luca Fantin, David Faure, Ismael Alonso (just about) and Miguel Gimeno (left to right) ride a Tsukiji wagon.

David Faure, of the Michelin-starred restaurant Aphrodite in Nice, France, plucked a fat specimen from the Styrofoam bin and nodded his approval. "Very sweet," he said.

"I'd prefer it with a little olive oil and some salt," quipped Tokyo-based chef Luca Fantin, whose restaurant, Bulgari Il Ristorante, earned its first star this year. "But I usually have cappuccino at this time of day."

Faure, together with his wife and business partner, Noelle, and three chefs from Spain -- Erlantz Gorostiza, the talented young chef of M.B in Tenerife; Ismael Alonso, second-in-command at Sergi Arola in Madrid; and line chef Miguel Gimeno -- had come to Tokyo to shop for culinary inspiration.

The night before, they'd ridden the bullet train from Shin-Osaka Station with Toine Hoeksel, executive chef at the Ritz-Carlton Osaka, to join Fantin and Kiyonari Araki, of Azure 45 in the Ritz-Carlton Tokyo, for a guided tour of the world's most celebrated fish market.

The European chefs were in Japan to participate in the first annual Asian Pacific Food and Wine Festival at the Ritz-Carlton Osaka, a month-long event featuring special dinners with Michelin-starred chefs from across the globe.

However, my time in such exalted company was limited -- they'd be heading back to Kansai after lunch.

Insider perks

Looks good enough to eat, but watch the spines on the amaebi.

Tsukiji is a place of dizzying chaos, where carts stacked with crates of squirming eels and an array of sea creatures you've likely never seen before whiz by a mile a minute. For chefs, it's destination number one.

"In Europe, you don't get live fish unless you catch it yourself," Gimeno remarked, stopping to snap a photo of tairagai shellfish as big as dinner plates.

Shockingly large tairagai among the shellfish on sale.

By the time we'd arrived, just past 5 a.m., the tuna auction was well under way.

We stood on the sidelines, behind the auctioneer, and watched as merchants bid on whole tuna worth tens of thousands of dollars with a flash of their fingers.

Traveling with chefs has its perks. You get to see and taste things that regular consumers rarely do.

More on CNNGo: Our insider guide to Tsukiji market