What’s in a name? Take bagatelle. Is it a trifle, a musical composition or a board game? The latter description sticks most. Yet even this is not without its nuances. Bagatelle is often confused with pinball, the down-at-heel arcade game where steel balls race around a glass-covered machine with flashing lights. Yet it is actually an 18th-century table game derived from billiards and named after the neoclassical French castle in which it was first played with ivory balls, wooden pins and cue sticks.

Bagatelle is also the brand name for the exclusive restaurant whose Mediterranean cuisine and live music have combined to attract a kitten-heeled following across the globe, from New York to St Tropez via Rio de Janeiro and Dubai to name but a few Bagatelle destinations. Finally its star-studded trail has reached the shores of Monaco so I decided to go along to find out what all the fanfare was about.

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