Richard McComb enters the culinary firmament with Birmingham's top chefs – somewhere north of Lyon.

It’s not often, probably wisely, that you get to dine with just about all the chefs from Birmingham’s top restaurants.

I am sandwiched between Glynn Purnell and Richard Turner, the bosses of their self-named restaurants, and am sitting opposite Adam Bennett, the head chef at Simpsons. To my left is Andy Waters, chef/patron of Edmunds.

It’s quite an odd atmosphere, made odder when a team of waiters solemnly delivers the first course, an “oeuf surprise.” Eyebrows are raised. One of Purnell’s signature dishes is a dessert of “burnt English custard egg surprise.”

Purnell’s egg comes in various guises, depending on the season, so the dish might be adorned with strawberries or an autumnal fruit crumble. But its centrepiece is unmistakably an egg.

So, an egg in Brum, an egg in Lyon. I’m shell-shocked. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose...

The difference is that this oeuf is very French – within the shell, floating under a light foam, are frog legs. Three sweet spoonfuls later and they’re gone. Very nice too.

This turns out to be the start of a long – make that very long – evening. Eggstatically long. Chefs may eat on the hoof in their own kitchens but when they dine out they ensure no corner is cut, no glass remains unfilled. A magnum of Champagne is ordered as an aperitif. It goes on from there.

Because chefs can never agree where to eat, we’ve had to make a bit of a trek, to Lyon in fact. And because chefs never make it easy, and aren’t content with the city centre, which teems with superlative restaurants, we’ve had to take a half-hour taxi ride into the countryside to an outlying northern satellite of the cradle of global gastronomy.

We have come to Restaurant Guy Lassausaie at Chasselay, which is a place where things happen slowly. Perfect. The last time the mayor’s office updated the online details of the local budget was in 2007. Wikipedia declares Chasselay is a “relatively rural community without a train station.” That’s it.

So why have the big guns of Brum gastronomy invited me here, other than for my sparkling conversation? It’s certainly not because they are paying.

We have come to Lyon for a gathering of Delice, the international network of food cities of which Birmingham is treasurer. Delegates have come together to discuss mutually beneficial partnerships aimed at promoting new skills, employment and healthier lifestyles, all under the umbrella of appreciation of food.

Birmingham was the host city for a Delice meeting in the summer and now Lyon is hosting a gathering to thrash out future strategies to raise the network’s profile and spread the gospel of gastronomy as a force for good.