If a restaurant where only celebrities can get tables is considered to be cool, then imagine one where literally nobody can. Joel Robuchon, a triple Michelin-starred Frenchman, has opened a restaurant in Paris so haute in every sense that not even Madonna can make a reservation. Everyone, whoever they are, has to turn up and queue.
But not queue for a table, because L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon has also done away with tables. The restaurant has just 42 places, and they are located along a sort of breakfast counter built around an open-plan kitchen. This café bar-style seating arrangement means there is little point coming to dine in a party of more than three. You are probably better off as two. In fact, L'Atelier is conceived to be so far from a social exercise that customers are encouraged to come and eat by themselves - something very few chefs could pull off.
But Joel Robuchon is not just some old cook with an eccentric new idea. Crowned the 'chef of the century' in France, at the height of his fame seven years ago he declared it was all 'too much stress, I want to live', and retired. It was a national tragedy for France, who felt much as Liverpool might if Michael Owen suddenly announced he could no longer be doing with football. But after all the tears, Robuchon is now back - with what he claims to be the future of restaurants.
And it is the latest obsession of global foodies. There are entire internet message boards in the US devoted to L'Atelier, with fierce arguments raging about everything from the carpaccio langoustines with pink peppercorns, to the 'icy efficiency' of the service and 'weird' lunch-counter design. 'The avocado fondant with tomato coulis is probably one of the most memorable things I've ever eaten at any restaurant anywhere,' swoons one excitable New Yorker. A claim by another that the food was 'pedestrian' provoked total uproar.
It is the culinary controversy of the season. Is the no-reservations policy gratuitously inconvenient, or gorgeously democratic? 'At least,' one American diner points out meekly, 'it means that nobodies stand a chance of getting a meal.' Whether getting a seat here by waiting in line makes you feel like a celebrity or a nobody is probably a matter of individual interpretation. But what I find when I try it for lunch is that, as soon as I'm seated, I feel like a patient. Eating here is like receiving a highly advanced private medical treatment. The waiter leans over the counter for a discreet consultation, addressing himself to your order as if it were a delicate medical condition, and he a physician. The chefs look like surgeons, using the kitchen as if it was an operat ing theatre.
Robuchon wasn't joking when he said he wanted a change from traditional dining. For a start, there is the queue - a hungry gaggle, standing outside on the pavement like teenagers queuing for the Hard Rock Café. Inside, the look is not quite burger bar, but it is a long way from your usual Michelin-starred grandeur. Done out in black, red and chrome, the restaurant resembles a cross between an Eighties piano bar and a pizza parlour. And apart from faint background muzak, it is awfully quiet, for the other diners don't say much to each other. All anyone appears to be interested in is the food.
When it arrives, you understand why. An egg is poached in a sort of creamy girolles mushroom soup, and served in a cocktail glass. There is caramelised quail with puréed potato and white truffles, basil and lime sorbet with peach. Each dish is an unprecedented sensation, and the idea of ever again considering eating anything I'd previously thought of as food quickly becomes absurd.
I get through 10 courses, feel not even slightly sick - although perhaps a little dazed - and have decided Joel is a genius. Why would anyone care about sumptuous luxury when you can have all this for around £100? The social side of dining out suddenly seems like a preposterous waste of money.
It's on the Eurostar home that guilt begins to set in. I remember all those greedy, serious faces along the counter, practically being hand fed, each of us in a little world of our own pleasure. With all the chatter and courtship and smoke of dining out pared away, the eating seems faintly obscene. I feel as though I've just visited an extremely high-class Paris brothel.
Interestingly, despite Robuchon's glittering fame, not one celeb has yet eaten at L'Atelier. Their problem, presumably, is being unable to book a table.
L'Atelier Joël Robuchon, Hôtel Pont Royal 5, rue de Montalembert 75007 Paris (0033 1 42 84 70 00)
Mimi Spencer is on maternity leave
