As well as the cheddar faux pas, Veyrat accused Michelin of mistaking scallops for monkfish liver and demanded the guide disclose how its secretive inspectors came to their decision.

He wanted the court to force Michelin to prove its inspectors had actually visited his Alpine restaurant, La Maison des Bois, and to produce "traces of debate" leading to its decision to remove his third star in 2019 a year after obtaining it "without any warning" and "with almost exactly the same team".

The demotion was, he claimed, "unprecedented in the history of gastronomic criticism".

When he lost his third étoile, Veyrat, famed for his "botanic" cuisine and black Savoyard hat, insisted Michelin take him out of its next edition, which it refused. He then pressed for charges, demanding symbolic damages of one euro.

"I'm not a bad loser," he told said before the verdict on Tuesday (Wednesday Australian time). "If tomorrow, they show precisely when their inspectors came to my restaurant, in what conditions and precisely why we don't deserve a third star, I'll accept it."

Countersuing for €30,000 ($48,000) in costs and compensation, Michelin branded Veyrat a "narcissistic diva" suffering from "pathological egotism".

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In court, their lawyer, Richard Malka, warned: "You are being asked quite simply to do away with the freedom to criticise. It's a Pandora's box."

Michelin, he argued, was "an instrument for consumers, not the property of chefs".

Emmanuel Ravanas, lawyer for the superchef, disagreed, saying that in common French law, "criticism is not entirely free". "You don't have the right to write any old thing on the pretext of freedom of expression."

But the Nanterre court ruled that the cook's camp had provided no evidence of any "legitimate motive" to back up claims that Michelin's inspectors had committed a "disproportionate breach of independent evaluation" beyond the legal bounds of "freedom of expression".

Even before the ruling, the chef insisted he had no need of Michelin's coveted étoiles, weeks after being named one of the 10 "immortals" of haute cuisine by the rival Gault & Millau guide.

The Telegraph, UK