Expensive tastes: Your bill, sir. $1,000,000, please

Probably the most expensive meal in the world was served last night to 15 paying customers and 25 invited guests. The bill was $1m, which works out at about £13,000 per head. Gratuities, it is understood, were at the discretion of the customer.

This remarkable feast was served in a Bangkok hotel to high-rolling gourmets and curiosity seekers, who jetted in from Europe, the United States and across Asia. Lest anyone choke at the sheer conspicuous consumption of it all, organisers pointed out that "most" of the profits will go to two charities - Médecins Sans Frontières and the Chaipattana Foundation, a rural development charity set up by the King of Thailand.

Six three-star Michelin chefs from France, Italy and Germany prepared the meal's 10 courses, each paired with a rare fine wine. "It's surreal! The whole thing is surreal," said Alain Solivérès, the celebrated chef of Taillevent in Paris. He was commissioned to prepare two of his signature dishes, including the opening course: a crème brûlée of foie gras to be washed down with a 1990 Cristal - Roederer's elegant champagne, which retails at upwards of £250 a bottle, but still stood out as one of the evening's cheapest wines.

Little expense was spared in putting together the event, titled "Epicurean Masters of the World". The ingredients were flown in fresh: black truffles, foie gras, oysters and live Brittany lobsters; caviar; Jerusalem artichokes and white truffles from Rome. Diners sipped their way through legendary vintages, like a 1985 Romanée-Conti, a 1959 Château Mouton Rothschild, a 1967 Château d'Yquem and a 1961 Château Palmer, considered "one of the greatest single wines of the 20th century," according to Alun Griffiths of Berry Bros & Rudd, the St James's wine merchants which procured and shipped them. The wine alone cost more than £100,000, he said.

As Solivérès said: "To have brought together all of these three-star Michelin chefs, and to serve these wines for so many people is just an incredible feat. C'est fabuleux!"

Diners included a casino owner from Macau, a Taiwanese hotelier, company executives and assorted high-rollers from around the world, said the host, Deepak Ohri, manager of Bangkok's Iebua Hotel at the State Tower, though he declined to reveal their identities. To ensure discretion, guests were escorted to a restaurant on the 65th floor in a private elevator.

Some of the chefs admitted they were stunned by the price. "It's crazy," said Antoine Westermann of Le Buerhiesel in Strasbourg, France, where diners pay about £150 a head. "The fact that one meal could be this expensive..." he shrugged.

Whether this is literally the world's costliest dinner is difficult to determine. Wine lovers regularly organise exorbitantly expensive tastings with fine food in New York, London and Japan. Hedonistic hedge-fund managers are known for dropping outrageous sums for a single night.

And how to measure the true cost of the meal for the five investment bankers who famously spent the best part of £50,000 on wine at Gordon Ramsay's Pétrus? He threw in the food for free. They all got the sack.

Alternatively... What £13,000 could buy

* 6,532 portions of lasagne from Marks & Spencer

* 600 boxes of therapeutic feeding milk containing essential nutrients to treat severe malnutrition in emergency starvation situations such as Niger

* 150 mini-libraries - including two bookshelves and 50 books each - in children's centres in tsunami-hit communities in Thailand

* Sponsorship of four of the world's poorest children for

17 years each, providing food, water, security and education

* A three-bedroom house in Tarvastu Vald, Estonia: fully renovated, it comes with electric heating, sauna, cellar, two sheds - and five acres of land.

Will Dowling