Why does michelin review restaurants

However, the Michelin star rating was reduced to a 2-star system during this time because of food shortages. Understandably, quality suffered at restaurants throughout Europe, so the yardstick was adjusted accordingly.

In , Michelin came up with a rating system that acknowledged restaurants serving high-quality fare at moderate prices, called the Bib Gourmand.

This system highlights dining opportunities that are more reflective of economic standards. They are customized by region and country based on the cost of living — and gives diners a chance to eat well without breaking the bank. Today, the Michelin Guide reviews restaurants in select U.

Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Macau were added to the Guide between It now covers 23 countries, with 14 editions sold in 90 countries around the world. France — 2. Japan — 3. Italy — 4. Germany — 5. The United States — First, the Michelin Guide team will select a number of restaurants in select locations to be inspected by an anonymous reviewer. After the inspector visits the selected restaurant, they write a comprehensive report about the total culinary experience, including the quality and presentation of the dishes, among other rating criteria outlined below.

The group of Michelin inspectors will then meet to analyze the reports and discuss in-depth which restaurants are worthy of a Michelin star or two or three. Chef Curtis Duffy, a friend of Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts, partnered with Michael Muser to build Grace restaurant in Chicago, which was honored with three Michelin stars four years in a row from to In July , Duffy opened a new restaurant called Ever which has earned 2 Michelin stars.

I was just getting my voice in the world. The first year that it came out in Chicago, we were able to receive two Michelin stars. And that was an incredible feat. It just solidified that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. Elements of the restaurant such as ambiance, decor, and quality of service are supposedly not considered in the report, but many think that the total experience may subconsciously woo the reviewers.

Quality of products 2. Mastery of flavour and cooking techniques 3. The personality of the chef represented in the dining experience 4. Value for money 5. No doubt, restaurants that receive a Michelin star rating are filled with pride, gain prestige, and usually get an increase in exposure and business.

Only restaurants attached to hotels were included, and they were listed rather than carefully rated. Information about installing and caring for Michelin tires occupied the first 33 pages, and ads for car part manufacturers occupied another 50 pages. Maps and basic information about dozens of towns made up the bulk of the guide. A legend for a map in an early Michelin Guide, with the Michelin Man smoking in the corner.

It was a different time. For drivers, that information was essential. Gas stations did not yet exist, so drivers needed to know which pharmacies sold gasoline in several-liter containers.

Motorists needed the timetables that listed when the sun set during the year, because highways did not yet have lights. Only a fraction of auto repair shops stayed open all year, which made it crucial to know which closed at the end of summer.

Details like this distinguished the Michelin Guide from the tour books of the time, which assumed that people traveled by rail.

Once company employees began rating hotels, they made clear to hoteliers that they should offer free parking. They also lobbied the government to put up road signs for motorists—Edouard Michelin is sometimes credited with inventing road numbers, because he convinced the government to enlarge the numbers it painted on highway posts.

At times, company men put up road signs themselves. Similarly, a major aim of Michelin marketing was to promote the car as a way of life. In creating the guide, the brothers hoped to provide the information and infrastructure that would convince rich people to buy cars, drive throughout France, and buy Michelin tires. Even if that meant creating an entire guidebook side-business to do it. The Michelin brothers were not modest men. Predicting that its promotional guidebook would endure for years was bold.

Yet, remarkably, it was an underestimate. Michelin distributed tens of thousands of complimentary copies in Some wrote every week. During this period, the focus on tire maintenance gave way to classic guidebook fare. In , Michelin created regional guides, later known as Green Guides, which resemble Lonely Planet and traditional travel guides. Meanwhile, the Red Guide, in response to reader interest, focused on reviews of hotels and restaurants, with separate guides for different areas and cities.

The company hired full-time critics, known as inspectors, to spend months on the road judging the best restaurants. By the s, the Red Guides enjoyed international renown. So how did a tire company become—and why does it remain—the arbiter of culinary greatness? One prerequisite is the longevity of the Michelin tire company, which is a remarkable story in itself.

The guide lamented how many "good [French] cooks sit in German prison camps waiting for return to their ovens. The year tenure of the Michelin brothers was a partnership between Edouard, an engineer credited with important advances in tire technology, and Andre, a marketing genius. In addition to the guide, Andre paid newspapers to run columns describing the spread of his magnificent pneumatic tires, deftly played to French nationalism Michelin competed in a promotional road race in Germany, the company reassured French readers, to beat the Germans , created a community by positioning Michelin as in the service of motorists and their cause, and invented the Michelin Man, the instantly-recognizable stack-of-tires mascot that is now on the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame.

And so did the fact that Michelin is a French company. More importantly, the Michelin Guide restaurant reviews could be shamelessly elitist because the tire customers targeted by Michelin in were the elite. The Michelin Man looks like a marshmallow today, but when he was created, cars were toys for the rich, and he looked like Michelin customers: He chomped on a cigar, held a champagne flute, and wore a pince-nez.

A normal restaurant guide could never have maintained such selective standards that it only awarded stars to a few dozen or just a few restaurants in an entire country. The market of interested people would be too small to cover its costs. A poster for the Michelin Man in his original incarnation as an upper class man. His champagne flute contains broken glass to represent how Michelin's air-filled tires "drink up obstacles. The Michelin Guide has been criticized for not employing enough inspectors to authoritatively judge the areas it covers.

But when a typical travel guide awards a restaurant four stars, that usually means an employee quickly visited several years ago, and someone recently spent five minutes making sure it still exists.

Or, as is the case with Zagat, it relies on customer reviews and surveys. You may believe in the Yelp model, but most millionaires and world renowned chefs do not. Only Michelin can afford to send eight inspectors to a restaurant in a year when deciding whether to give it a third star—inspectors who remain secret rather than ask for free meals, and who the few accounts of journalists accompanying inspectors make clear identify each ingredient and do things like furrow their brow and say, "It is a question of grave importance whether it deserves its three stars.