The woman at the next table shot me a sneer of withering contempt, as if she suspected that the Vaucluse asparagus and crushed black truffles would be wasted on me and the turbot and caramelised endives would go over my head.

Haughty courtesans frowned from their gilded portrait frames, branding me a philistine in tableware, a child of Colonel Saunders, rather than Carême or Escoffier.

“Je propose une flute de Billecart-Salmon Champagne Rose suivie par un Clos Saint Joseph avec votre coquillages et peut-etre un Château de Beaucastel Vieilles Vignes Châteauneuf-du-Pape,” said the sommelier, leaving me with the wine list and translation problems.

My throat went dry. My heart lurched. My Adam’s apple did a bungee jump. I noticed that one bottle of Château Petrus 1945 would cost me roughly €9,800 – way over my Visa card limit.

It is a once-in-a-lifetime expe­rience to eat in an Alain Ducasse restaurant. His acclaimed ‘temple of taste’ and ‘shrine to savoir-faire’ in Monte Carlo is one of the most famous and best in the world and is on the itinerary of the ultimate gourmet holiday offered by online luxury travel operator Holidays Please.

For six months, guests eat for an average of €353 per head at all 103 of the world’s three Michelin-starred restaurants.

They stay at the best and most sophisticated hotels, such as Conrad Tokyo, Claridge’s in London, Trump International in New York and Monaco’s Hotel de Paris.

The whole trip costs a whopping €256,600, including house wine. Gratuities are not included. Doggy bags are discretionary. Rest and bloat recuperation days are liberally provided.

The itinerary is mouth-watering. Monday could see you tucking into salmon poached in liquorice gel at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck.

Tuesday may be perhaps the roasted calf head or celebrated guinea fowl cassoulet with dark chocolate soufflé at Joachim Wissler’s Bergisch Gladbach Vendome in Cologne.

The next day could see you enjoying a tasting of the very best of new Spanish Basque cuisine at Restaurante Arzak in San Sebas­tian and a chance to savour its walnut brittle sea bass.

You spend a month eating around France. In Paris you have the best tables booked at L’Ambroisie, Le Meurice and Arpege.

I noticed that one bottle of Cháteau Petrus 1945 would cost me roughly €9,800 – way over my Visa card limit

You eat in 17 award-winning restaurants in Germany, 12 in Spain and 15 in Italy, including Florence’s Enoteca Pinchiorri and La Pergola in Rome.

In Hong Kong it is L’Atelier Robuchon. In Japan, your palate, if not jaded by now and crying out for a toasted sandwich or beans on toast, it is Tokyo’s Sushi Saiton and Sushi Yoshitake as well as 20 others like Osaka’s Taian and Kyoto’s Kikunoi Honten...

You are expected in seven diffe­rent New York restaurants including Daniel Eleven Madison Park, and Per Se.

Sample some excellent vintages at Michelin-starred restaurants such as Monte Carlo’s Hotel de Paris. Photos: Riekephotos/ZRyzner/Shutterstock

This after being fed gastrono­mically at the St Helena Mea­­do­­­­­­­w­ood in California’s Napa Valley, where it is considered rude not to have the signature black cod in acorn flour dust, baked local rutabaga, yellow turnip with shaved white truffle and duck consommé.

It all ends, pounds lighter and stones heavier, in Alain Ducasse’s Dorchester Hotel franchise in London’s Park Lane where – if you haven’t exploded – you’ll be in position to compare the best season products and à la carte choices like seared John Dory, Champagne sabayon and baby artichokes with the Tonbach Black Forest Schwarzwaldstube’s dessert trolley, the cheeseboard at the Megeve Flocons de Sel, the mine­ral water selection at St Tropez Residence de la Pinede and the Louis XV’s kilometre-long ‘cave’, its 15 different coffees, 16 different teas and 15 types of cigar.

Try to remember which city you had that amazing Pyrenean suckling lamb.

Then try to recall your starter at Peter Goossen’s Hof Van Cleve in west Belgium and what your partner had to finish with, all those expensive epicurean evenings ago, at the Moliere in Sapporo.

Monte Carlo’s Hotel de Paris has always been a place of uninhibited self-indulgence; a byword for the high life. The rich and famous all went there.

A Russian grand duke once smashed 60 magnums of Champagne against a marble pillar just for a toast. Fourteen hundred bottles of fine wines were consumed every day in its heyday.

It remains the place to decide – in a loud voice – what is has been your favourite sensual experience.

Was it that the velouté of Breton lobster with chestnuts, or maybe bass filet with sautéed cuttlefish and anchovy fritters?

Or chef Shihgeya Sakakibara’s gingko nut, lotus root and matsutake mushroom tempura at the 10-seat 7 Chome Kyoboshi restaurant in Tokyo?

And, finally, fulfil your long-held jet-setting gourmand/mogul fantasy of sitting back in your chair cradling a balloon of bizarrely expensive Armagnac digestif and saying to the room in general: “The Chateau d’Yquem is so hit or miss here. Such a shame there was no eel on today either. But Alain told me that fishermen in the Straits of Messina are on strike. Of course, it would’ve never happened in King Farouk’s day...”

And see that snob opposite blanch and her fat husband choke on his outsized Cohiba cigar.

For further information and prices about Holidays Please’s Three Michelin Star holiday, go to www.holidaysplease.co.uk/news/gourmet-holiday