The £42,000 meal bill

Seven customers ran up a £42,000 bill at Gordon Ramsay's restaurant Petrus, it emerged today.

Amazingly, the bill fell short of the £45,000 record set by six Barclays Capital traders three years ago. They were sacked from their £1million-a-year jobs when the scale of their bill was revealed.

Ramsay, who co-owns Petrus with chef Marcus Wareing, said: "I hope he's back. Trust me, I'll cook for him personally. £42,000... my God. It was a nice way of starting the week off.

"It was staggering, though we did have a bigger bill back in 2001. It goes to show that these things aren't freaks."

Waiter Jean Pierre added: "The customer loves the restaurant and he comes every six months to London. He enjoys his wines and hopefully we'll see him back in six months."

Another member of staff said it took 45 minutes to process the bill on the customer's credit card, adding: "Next time he says he'll bring cash. It was definitely unusual."

A Petrus spokeswoman refused to reveal the identities of the latest customers, but one source said they were typical of traders who exemplified a current City trend for "trophy dining".

The source, a currency broker who admitted running up an £8,000 bill during lunch with a client, said: "If you go out with a contact a certain degree of largesse is expected.

"It's hard to spend more than £100 a head on food, but you do the damage on wine. You automatically look at the bottom of the list and go for the best. If the client is handing your company business worth hundreds of thousands a year, or maybe millions, then a sum like £42,000 is not that unreasonable.

"These guys are being entertained the whole time, and it takes a lot to impress them."

He said the "trophy diners' Mecca" was the chef 's table at Petrus, where customers pay extra for the privilege of seeing chefs in action.

Evening Standard food critic Fay Maschler said: "It would be very hard to spend as much as that. I do not think it is the best restaurant in terms of its food, but it does have a long and deep wine list. Some of those wines you probably could not buy, except at auction.

"It depends whether they were true oenophiles or just showing off."