any chance to eat at an Alain Ducasse joint should be taken at least once, and damn the cost.


Nom.

Very happily, I wasn't the one paying - and, in fact, I'd been passed one of those menus without the prices on.

I did have a sharp intake of breath at the prices on the wine list. The most expensive one I noted before choosing was £5,500 a bottle.

(It being a Red Burgundy, I rather suspect it wasn't a magnum.)

What with pre-dinner appetisers and champagne and cocktails, not to mention the wine I did choose, I suspect the cost for me alone may have surpassed the cost of the dinner for three at the Rockpool in Melbourne.

Hiring the limousine for the day to deliver three of us from Royston to the West End won't have been cheap either.

There's some town in Spain (I think) that claims to have more Michelin stars per head of population than anywhere else on the planet.

I suspect this is nonsense. I don't know what the population of Bray is, but it ain't many to share six stars between.

Yountville, CA, has 6 Michelin stars to share between its ~3200 residents.

Bray has 6 Michelin stars to share between its ~7200 residents.

I suspect the Spanish town is San Sebastián, but with ~184k inhabitants, it'll have a hard time beating the above two.

Oh, and Sluis has 3 stars to share between its ~2300 residents, so it pips Bray.

I failed to actually make the reply below last night. I had roughly the same figures for population.

I had automatically disregarded San Sebastian. It may be a fine place to dine, but even 25 years or so ago when I stayed there, it was very obviously a city. I can't see it passing the ratio for Yountville.

Bray has 8640 people, or 1440 people per star, it would seem.

Roses in Spain has El Bulli, but that's a town of 20,197 people, so a worse ratio.

And Sant Pol de Mar has a smaller population at only 5,102, but has only a single 3-star place listed.

However, Yountville in California, with a population of 2,916, has a 3-star place, thus managing less than 1,000 people per star.

(The above is looking at 3-star places. I've not included 1 and 2 star places.)

If you're only looking at 3-star restaurants: "Oud Sluis" has 3 stars, and the village of Sluis has ~2300 residents.

(Are Yountville's other 3 stars in the form of 1 & 2 star restaurants?)

Yountville has the single 3-star place, in the form of the French Laundry. The other three stars will be from lesser establishments (I'd guess three off of 1 star venues).

Sluis looks to be the smallest place that contains a 3-star venue.

Bray appears to be the smallest place with more than a single 3-star restaurant.

Oh, and Tokyo appears to beat Paris (but then it's a much, much bigger city). Michelin has discovered Japan, and has been handing out stars seemingly like confetti. It looks like the reviewers arrived in Tokyo in 2007, and got to Kyoto and Osaka in 2009. That place in Tokyo we ate at? It must have got its star about the time we ate there.