It hurts me to say it, but there are things that the French do better than the Italians. The best French wine is in a league all of its own, provided that you can afford it, and the best French food is an experience not easily forgotten. That said I should, by way of balance, add that I also believe that in general Italian food is better, and that the mid-range of French wines are over-priced. It's at the top end of both wine and food that the French excel.

And it's the top end of the French cuisine that sets the standards against which we judge the excellence and the competence of other boards. So when I got the offer to dine at Michel Chabran's two-star Michelin restaurant just outside Valence the only response possible was a yes, just to remind my palate of just what it is that so many restaurants here are trying to emulate. Valence is some fifty miles south of Lyons, which puts it at the hub of the best French regional gastronomy. Michel's restaurant is specifically in Pont de L'Isere - a little north of Valence - where the Isere river meets the Rhone, which also puts it in the heart of the Cotes de Rhone wine appellation.

Before we went to dine at Michel's he had organised a tasting for us the Chapoutier Caves, one of the negociants of the Cotes de Rhone. Diligently we tasted our way through an impressive array of Rhone wines, from Condrieu in the North to Gigondas in the South. It was a taste of some of the delights to come over dinner.

Michel's restaurant is called 'Restaurant Michel Chabran' and is on the Nationale 7 a few miles to the North of Valence. Inside there is a spacious ante-room for pre-dinner drinks and menu-perusing, which was once in earlier days the whole restaurant. The menu is impressive, both in content and in the quality of the printing. There are four pages of a la carte listings and two pages of set menus - one at 655 francs, the other at 495, which is approximately £80 and £60 respectively. My own temptation when faced with such a long list of wonderful dishes was simply to put myself in Michel's hands and let him decide for me. There are over four hundred wines on the wine list, mostly Rhones, so we left that choice to Michel as well.

What makes a restaurant two-star? Well firstly the food has to be excellent, but it must also provide first-class service and beautiful surroundings. Michel's dining room is spacious and elegant, the tables were laid with Limoges plates dusted with gold, the cutlery handsome and the five wine glasses at each setting were heavy lead crystal.

But on to the meal. The first wine to arrive was a 1992 Condrieu made by Francois Villard which was one of the most wonderful white wines I've ever tasted - and extraordinary explosion of tastes. To accompany it we had an amuse bouche of chicken gelee with tarragon cream. Next came a small circular bed of potato puree on which was layer of Sevruga caviar. It was simple, but the combination of textures was just perfect. Next came a lobster salad which was served with thin slivers of pork cheek. Not a combination one would immediately think of, but it worked

brilliantly. Next we were presented with young asparagus shoots served with jumbo prawns and an emulsion of olive oil and basil. With this we had a Saint Joseph 1994 Cuvee Prestige. What became slowly apparent to me was that as each new wine came to compliment each course, the previous wine was simply removed, whether finished or not. Probably this is intelligent when there are lots of wines to taste as there were this evening, but when wonderful wines were being whisked away, I did feel a little sorry. When the main courses arrived, with Domaine de La Fouterie 1993 Cornas to accompany it, a silence descended on the table. A poularde de Bresse, a pigeon, scallops with morels, a rack of lamb, sea bass and lastly medallions of Charolais fillet served with deep-fried lettuce kept everyone's attention firmly on the food. I'm not going to dwell on any of these dishes, but each one was about as perfect a plateful as I've tasted for a long time.

Before the desserts arrived we had our pre-dessert, which was a dark chocolate cake with vanilla ice-cream. Desserts, when they arrived, included wood-strawberries from the Ardeche with vanilla ice-cream; hot souffle of Grand Marnier; a pistacchio ice-cream and a chocolate assiette. We had a Vin de Paille Hermitage 1991 to go with the desserts which is an interesting wine. The bunches of grapes are left to shrivel in the sun on straw matting after they've been picked so that the sugar becomes more concentrated and the flavours more intense. It makes a sweet and aromatic dessert wine of 16 degrees of alcohol, which is strong enough.

Lastly we had a selection of cheeses, of which a farmhouse Roquefort was the star. With this we had a Maury, a vin doux naturel. It's made the way port is by adding alcohol before the fermentation is complete, leaving a sweet, fortified wine with 20 degrees of alcohol. It's then stored in sealed demijohns and left outside for eighteen months to weather - sun, frost and wind - and then is aged in the bottle for six years. Just in case this wasn't enough to make us fit to burst, two trays of home-made petits fours arrived to further tempt our gluttony. With these we drank a Rasteau 1995, a red dessert wine from the Beaumes de Venise area made in the same way as the Maury.

I couldn't help noticing that we'd been eating - not just sitting in the restaurant - for four hours, which in itself made the evening a little special. The care, the attention to detail, the exquisite service and the wonderful food all combined to make this a truly memorable meal. But more importantly, when I'm next in a restaurant that's striving toward haute cuisine, I've been reminded of what the end product ought to be.