Elegant it is not. Here and there I see a bit of corrosion caused by salt blowing in from the bay. The dining room isn’t beautiful—I’m really not fond of the Peg-Board wall. Still, it has grown on me. The bathroom is inside, but you must walk outside to reach it. Amenities include peppermint soap and an orchid, but not hot water.

The back of the restaurant is a warren of tiny storage areas plus a larger room where Moran’s malt scrolls and cracked-wheat logs with sesame crusts are baked daily—not a viable economic proposition for a restaurant of this size. “I’m not a baker,“ says Moran. “The team does it. Everyone has a go.“ When there was too great a demand in Australia for organic butter and he couldn’t get any, he found organic cream, and now the butter is made on the premises, too.

His cuisine is part home cooking, part Italian, and part gastropub—sturdy food enhanced with pan drippings and plenty of lemon. Plate arrangements are not elaborate; the food arrives looking au naturel. What makes it unparalleled are his products, for Australia takes the concept of organic seriously. It is not a marketing tool, as in America, but a guarantee of superior quality. He and his partner, Michael Robertson, live partly in the Blue Mountains, a hundred kilometers away and a thousand meters above sea level, where they have, as Moran describes it, “a shack, a veggie patch, and fruit trees.“

I ate alone, but not for long. Seated next to me were three Australian women who had ordered exactly the same food so as not to suffer “dish envy.“ They yanked my wooden table closer to theirs—strong Aussie stock, they were—and proceeded to nibble everything that came my way: firm Coffin Bay oysters that hadn’t spawned; chunky prawn-and-cauliflower dumplings, much like coarse quenelles, in a prawn broth; slivers of black truffles, cultivated on Australian soil, with hand-rolled noodles; and skin-on panfried harpuka, a game fish, with sorrel gnocchi, each course accompanied by a local wine, the term somewhat loosely defined. My favorite was an ’06 Saint Clair Reserve Pinot Grigio from New Zealand.

Should you visit, you might notice a pair of field glasses on the shelf in the back of the restaurant. Feel free to use them. They’re for watching the whales that occasionally swim by.

Everywhere I went, I asked about greatness. Learning its meaning was as much my obsession as eating at restaurants that demonstrably possessed it. I worry now and then that I have a rather narrow viewpoint, one limited to my sense of taste, although I know I am occasionally able to expand my parameters to include beauty, kindness, and history.

Michel Troisgros told me that to find greatness in the modern world, “You have to love the work, love the people, and love the life. That is the same for all professions, but for a chef it is a big responsibility because you take from the planet what it gives you naturally. I think that is the new thing in cooking today. It is not like thirty years ago, when our customers were eating for the sake of eating. People do not want to eat a lot. They want the experience of eating. The chef is the artist and the artisan. He has to interpret what nature gives him.“

For Franck Cerutti of Le Louis XV, the cost of greatness is not sleeping at night, of continually asking himself how he might make his kitchen better. He says, “Here at Le Louis XV, we are very organized to being sick about organization. Sometimes I am afraid we lose the instinctiveness from so much of it. I taste every day, every minute, always questioning myself: Is this the way it should be?’ So much doubt!“ Nadia Santini says that on the day after she married her husband and became part of the dal Pescatore family, her husband’s grandmother Teresa said to her, “We eat well today because we worked very well yesterday, and if we want to eat well tomorrow, we must work very well today. For thirty-three years, when I arrive in the kitchen, I think what it is to work very well.“

For Moran of Sean’s Panaroma, “It’s all in the attitude, the vibe, that comes out of the kitchen. If it’s there, you can feel it when you walk into a restaurant.“ Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin adds, “To make a restaurant great, you cannot compromise standards. If I serve truffles, I could certainly fake them with fake truffles and truffle oil and 99 percent of my clientele would not see the difference. We don’t do that.“

Adrià has the most straightforward explanation of all: “People who are able to make something magic and you can’t explain it—that is great.“

I expected greatness from these seven restaurants. I encountered no disappointments. I ate much more than I expected I would, but perhaps that is the best definition of greatness. In its presence, a fork is impossible to put down.