Hosting a dinner party tends to feel like a pretty smug plan right up until a day or two before when the terror sets in and you realise your entire menu plan is based on obscure Yotam Ottolenghi ingredients available nowhere.

Then there’s cleaning, polishing and washing up three different sets of glass, cutlery and crockery, wiping away any remaining vestige of personal enjoyment from the whole experience.

It's exactly this kind of looming dread that puts you off bothering in the first place.

For those who like the ego massage of playing host, but want nothing of the drudgery, there is a solution - albeit one that comes at a price.

Private chef dining service La Belle Assiette has recently launched in Brighton with the promise of no shopping, cooking or washing up - while maintaining the satisfaction of a dutiful, though lazy host.

In fact you can dramatically escalate the entire experience and hire a bona fide Michelin Star-winning chef to come into your home and trounce your friends’ efforts with complex cookery no sensible person would dare attempt themselves.

You could not plausibly pass it off as your own, but who’s complaining when there are impressionist inspired plates dressed with three different purees and a veal stock reduction laboured over the course of four days.

One Brighton-based chef in who matches the above description and has recently signed up is Ian Swainson.

The 33-year-old's impressive CV includes stints at Alan Murchison's La Bécasse in Ludlow, A-lost celeb haunt The Samling hotel in the Lake District and L'Ortolan in Reading, where he has won a coveted Michelin Star at each asking.

One potential pitfall with such an arrangement is a stiff atmosphere, a feeling of having reverted back to the upstairs-downstairs world of Downtown Abbey.

But chefs enjoy an elevated stature these days, and Ian felt more like an artist in residence than a servant.

Once the initial oddness of the whole scenario melted away, there was only one thing to do but to eat and appreciate.

Most of the prep is done before he arrives just over an hour before serving, and he has remarkable Zen for a chef working in a totally unfamiliar domestic kitchen.

But while there was no pan throwing or obscene language, there was little compromise on the gastronomic menu, with warmed oysters dressed with celery cream and cured ham to get things going, which felt salty and almost alive.

He might have struggled for space on the kitchen counter plating up for eight, but it didn’t show as he blow-torched a makeshift production line of mackerel fillets.

Startlingly pretty, the fish came with a vibrant chilli and mango salad and blobs of wasabi and mango, which was both delicate and punchy, like being lured into submission and then clinically sparked out.

The main course was a take on a 1970s staple, once the height of sophistication, but now deeply unfashionable duck à l'orange.

A wholesale reimagination from the dish's gaudy origins, Ian blended orange with its brother in colour carrot, with purees of spinach and beetroot mingling with a deep meaty stock, for a vivid Jackson Pollock style canvass of abstract swipes and splashes.

There was more art inspired presentation, this time cubist, for the raspberry baked Alaska, which had perfectly formed lines of jelly subtly perfumed with green tea.

It all had the relaxed informality of a mate's house - which is exactly what it was - with the exceptionally high standards top fine dining restaurants.

The man himself joined us for a beer and a debrief afterwards, and there was a moment of realisation we were not the only first-timers in this situation.

After only recently settling in Brighton, a man of his talents may not be freelancing for long, but there are plenty of other enticing menus available in the area.

Ranging from £39 to £89 for a 'prestige menu', the price may be off-putting for some, but for those with a generous spirit, and a hatred of dinner party stresses, this could be just the celebratory solution.

labelleassiette.co.uk/