A London businessman claims he is the first person to have dined at all of the world's three-Michelin-starred restaurants.
Andy Hayler, from Chiswick, has travelled the globe over the past four years and visited all of the 68 three-starred restaurants in Europe, the USA and Asia.
He told the Evening Standard he completed his culinary marathon last month with a meal at Thomas Keller's Per Se in New York. The 20-course tasting menu at the restaurant in the Time Warner Centre in Manhattan was the most expensive meal of them all priced at a hefty £500.
Hayler said he started his gastronomic travels after a series of disappointing experiences at some of London's top-rated restaurants. But after reading a rave review of Joël Robuchon's Jamin in Paris, he decided to give fine dining one last chance. He estimates he has spent about £15,000 on food and drink and equally as much on travel costs and accommodation.
All the restaurants are reviewed on his eponymous blog and he said the best meal was at Christian Bau's three-Michelin-starred Schloss Berg restaurant in Germany. His other favourites were Alain Ducasse's Louis XV in Monaco and Anne Sophie Pic's eponymous restaurant in Valence in France.
But Hayler said he doesn't hold his home country's three-starred restaurants in particularly high regard. Out of the Roux family's Waterside Inn, Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and Gordon Ramsay he said only the Fat Duck truly deserves Michelin's top accolade.
Hayler added that France is still the world's gastronomic epicentre. "We simply don't have the sheer depth of restaurant culture they have. In France even being a waiter in a three-star restaurant is a career people look up to," he said.
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