Profile The Michelin guide:It's notoriously inconsistent, and favours French restaurants, but a Michelin star is still something no self-respecting alpha male chef can live without, writes Tom Doorley
It's a fair guess that more people these days associate the name Michelin with restaurants than with tyres. Its guides are seen by some as the ultimate navigational aid for people with deep pockets who take food very seriously indeed.
André Michelin identified an opportunity for clever marketing when he published his first guide in 1900. Motoring was new and very much a minority pursuit. Drivers approached each cross-country journey with the air of intrepid explorers. And if they ran into trouble, they were much more likely to be attended to by the blacksmith than by a new-fangled mechanic. The first Michelin guide was essentially a list of garages, but it also included information on finding comfortable accommodation and decent food. It was a very practical little book and, at first, it was given away free. The story goes that André Michelin decided to charge for it only after a pile of copies were discovered propping up a workbench in a provincial garage.
There are restaurant guides and restaurant guides. There are the sort where establishments are invited to appear, often supplying the text for their own entry, for a fee, and these are much more common than is generally thought. Then there are the ones which are, in effect, written by readers, including such widely respected guides as Harden's in the UK and Zagat in the US.
And there's Michelin. It is in a class of its own.
The anonymous Michelin inspectors use five criteria when considering a restaurant for inclusion. These are, according to the publishers, "quality of products", "mastery of flavours and cooking", "personality of the cuisine", "consistency" and, believe it or not, "value for money". The latter criterion is interesting in that, by definition, Michelin-starred restaurants are expensive; and multi-starred restaurants are eye-wateringly expensive.
In the Michelin scheme of things, one star denotes "a very good restaurant in its category". And in all of Ireland, according to Michelin, we have a mere six of these.
Two Michelin stars means "excellent cooking and worth a detour". And, in all of Ireland we have just one of these, in the form of Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud.
Three Michelin stars indicates "exceptional cuisine and worth the journey", and this island, if you believe the guide, is utterly bereft of such restaurants.
Michelin is picky and still very French in its approach to eating out. Getting even one star, in Ireland, is a major achievement; in France, the standards that Michelin applies seem to be considerably less exacting. However, most people go through life without ever being aware of Michelin stars, let alone seeking out restaurants that have them. Normal human beings don't care about Michelin stars. Chefs, on the other hand, are obsessed with them, even when they publicly protest the contrary. A Michelin star means bums on seats, guaranteed, into the future. A Michelin star is very, very good for business.
But this is only one reason that chefs lose sleep and weight worrying about Michelin stars. In a macho profession, a star is what makes you an alpha male. Two stars make you king of the jungle and three means that you are a tower of testosterone.
CHEFS LOSE MORE than sleep over the machinations of Michelin. Bernard Loiseau, ironically born in Clermont-Ferrand, the home of the Michelin tyre factory, was one of France's most successful chefs and the chef-patron of three-star Le Cote d'Or in Burgundy. In 2002 his restaurant was demoted in the rival Gault-Millau restaurant guide and he became increasingly depressed.
In February 2003 he shot himself, having become convinced that Michelin was planning to take away one of his three stars. He was mistaken. Le Cote d'Or, a restaurant so professionally and painstakingly run that it remained open - and continued to serve some of the best cooking in the world - on the day Loiseau committed suicide, has retained its full quota of stars.
One Irish restaurateur claims, privately, that getting a Michelin star is a kind of curse. "If you don't have one you look forward to the great day, but as soon as you get it you start worrying about losing it," he says. "Losing a star must be bloody terrible. It means you're slipping. That's a terrible thing to have in black and white."
Michelin stars are controversial, but the award of "bib gourmand" possibly deserves to be more so. The bib doesn't refer to a giant napkin but rather to Bibendum, the figure otherwise known as the Michelin Man, and the award is said to denote "good food at moderate prices". Fifteen Irish restaurants qualify for this recognition but Michelin has never been strong on consistency; it seems very strange that Dublin's The Winding Stair gets a bib while l'Gueuleton doesn't, for example.
When Michelin first published its guide to New York city in 2005, it was roundly attacked for being far too French. The New York Times pointed out that over half of the restaurants that were awarded two or more stars were, in effect, French. There was widespread surprise that some of the restaurants celebrated by the city's notoriously hard-to-please critics didn't get a mention.
It is still a mystery to New Yorkers why the Union Square Cafe didn't get a star while its sister restaurant, the Gramercy Tavern, did. And the latest awards, announced this week, have not changed that.
In terms of consistency, however, this is the least of Michelin's sins, according to many observers. Although frequently accused of being far too French-centred, the first Michelin guide to Tokyo, which appeared in 2007, scattered stars like confetti.
THE JAPANESE CAPITAL garnered 191 of them in all: a staggering eight three-star restaurants, 25 with two, and 117 with one. This is almost twice the number of stars as Paris and more than three times that of New York.
Traditionally rather conservative (there was a time when cloches were de rigueur if a restaurant was to stand any chance of stellar recognition) and rather slow to react to new restaurants and emerging chefs, Michelin seems to be changing its tune.
Having paid little attention to Ireland (understandably enough for the most part) until comparatively recently, the 2008 Michelin guide awarded a star to two relatively new Dublin restaurants, Dylan McGrath's Mint in Ranelagh and Oliver Dunne's Bon Appetit in Malahide. These chefs have been up and running in their current restaurants for only 18 months and a year, respectively.
However, as McGrath had run the kitchen at Tom Aikens in London (when it was rated by its peers as the sixth best restaurant in the world), the Michelin inspectors knew his track record. Ross Lewis at Chapter One, who got one star last year and has retained it, did not come from the Michelin world and took many years to gain recognition. Oliver Dunne, McGrath's predecessor at Mint, had been cooking at a very high level there for several years so the star for Bon Appetit is no bolt from the blue.
"Michelin know where people are coming from," says McGrath. "And chefs chase stars not just because it's good for business and it fills your restaurants but because of the recognition. It's like the Oscars or any other awards. It makes you feel vindicated. Also, the more people talk about you having a chance of a star the more you want it because it looks like a failure if it doesn't come your way."
MCGRATH'S DETERMINATION to bag a Michelin star is the subject of a documentary, Pressure Cooker, which will be shown on RTÉ1 on Monday next. Interviewed for the programme, I expressed doubt that Mint would make it this year but it seems that Michelin is loosening up a little and taking Ireland more seriously.
McGrath has reason to feel very proud. The world of Michelin does not have a lot of time for small dining rooms with no reception desk, as is the case at Mint. That McGrath and his team have achieved a star in such surroundings is a tribute to utter dedication.
"I'm not saying it was easy at Tom Aikens," he says. "But I had 22 chefs there. I have three at Mint. The star is going to help fill the restaurant and it will get a bit easier to recruit the right kind of staff. I know some people think I'm mad to chase Michelin stars but I'm very ambitious and driven and I simply love good food. And I understand Michelin."
Not everybody does. And while the inspectors are happy to talk with chefs at the end of an anonymous visit, they don't go public on their decisions. Hence the mystery and the apparent inconsistencies. However, the omerta was broken some time ago by Michelin inspector Pascal Remy, who claimed that standards were slipping, inspections not carried out as frequently as stated and that the number of inspectors employed in France had dropped from 11 in 1988 to a mere five in 2003. He was subsequently sacked and lost his case claiming unfair dismissal.
"The Michelin Guide. How to Find Perfect" is the current slogan. It's a big claim and perhaps a foolish one. Michelin may be largely irrelevant to most people, but who isn't pleased when they hear they are being taken to a Michelin-starred restaurant? And has any chef ever turned down a Michelin star? Of course not, even though there are plenty of lunatics in the business.
That old Michelin magic casts a potent spell.
TheMichelinFile
What is it?
The most influential restaurant guide in the world.
Why is it in the news?
The 2008 edition has just appeared and two more Irish restaurants, Mint in Ranelagh and Bon Appetit in Malahide, have achieved the coveted Michelin star.
Most appealing characteristic:
Its ability to make fully grown chefs quiver like their own jellies.
Least appealing characteristic:
Inconsistency. It's easier for a restaurant in France to get a Michelin star than for an Irish one to get a mere "bib gourmand".
Most likely to say:
"A table for one, please. The name is Smith."
Least likely to say:
"I'll be your Michelin inspector for this evening."