Queues for the £300-a-head restaurant where you have to eat what you're given

What’s more, with a single set menu, guests must eat what they are given. But the sushi venue, the creation of Mitsuhiro Araki, who brought his family to London from Tokyo three years ago, has become one of only five in the UK to be awarded three Michelin stars for its cuisine.

All are in and around London. But at the unveiling today of the Michelin awards for 2018, a list which heavily favoured the capital, Yorkshire retained its place as the starriest provincial county in which to eat.

The region’s six Michelin-starred restaurants all retained their rankings, and six more - including, for the first time, Sheffield’s Jöro, Skosh in York and the Hope and Anchor at South Ferriby - were awarded Michelin’s Bib Gourmand for “good quality, good value cooking”.

There had been hopes that the tiny and picturesque North Yorkshire village of Harome, near Helmsley, would establish itself as the gastronomic centre of the region, with two world-class restaurants competing for attention.

Chef Andrew Pern’s Star Inn retained its rating but the nearby Pheasant, run by his former wife Jacquie and chef Peter Neville, was not on yesterday’s list.

Mr Pern, who also runs York’s Star Inn The City restaurant, opened a speciality fish restaurant, The Star Inn the Harbour, at Whitby earlier this year.

Some 45 miles to the west of Harome, the Yorke arms at Ramsgill, near Pateley Bridge, also retained its star despite the decision of its chef, Frances Atkins, to step down.

Yorkshire’s other stars belong to the Box Tree at Ilkley, the Black Swan at Oldstead, near Ampleforth, the Pipe and Glass at South Dalton, near Beverley, and Michael O’Hare’s The Man Behind The curtain, in Leeds.

Simon Gueller, chef proprietor at the Box Tree, said: “After 14 years you know you must be doing something right, but it’s vital you don’t let complacency set in.”

Each will now, for the first time, receive a red enamel plaque to place outside, in a revival by Michelin of a tradition dating from the 1920s, a period in which restaurants were given awards to encourage motorists to travel further.

Adam Smith, former head chef at the Burlington restaurant in the Devonshire Arms at Bolton Abbey, which was formerly itself on the Michelin list, was awarded a star for his new enterprise, the Coworth Park Hotel at Ascot.

At yesterday’s awards ceremony in London, Mr Araki and his family wept as they received their three stars from Michael Ellis, international director of the Michelin guides, and the racing driver and broadcaster Amanda Stretton.

Mr Ellis said: “When Mitsuhiro Araki moved to London from Tokyo in 2014 he set himself the challenge of using largely European fish and his sushi is now simply sublime.”

However, the coveted Michelin stars are no every restaurateur’s taste. Last week, the Boath House country hotel in Nairn, near Inverness, asked to be stripped of its Michelin star, saying its expectations were “at odds with achievable profit margins”, and that the cost of producing Michelin standard cooking was “too high and too stressful.

A week earlier, the triple-starred French chef Sebastian Bras also asked for his restaurant, Le Suquet, to be dropped from the guide because he could “no longer stand the pressure”.

Four restaurants have retained their three-star Michelin rating in the new list: Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck and Alain Roux’s Waterside Inn in Bray, Berkshire; Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester in Park Lane and Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea.

Twenty restaurants now have two stars, including a new entry by Claude Bosi, also in Chelsea, which gains a second star.

Seventeen restaurants gained one star, bringing the total number holding a star to 150. They include celebrity chef Tom Kerridge’s pub, The Coach, in Marlow, Bucks, and Michael Caines’ Lympstone Manor in Devon. Michael Smith also won a star for his restaurant in a converted crofter’s house on the Isle of Skye.