The Michelin Guide is arcane, self-serious and totally nonsensical. Even the chefs themselves can't workout the star system. And yet, we can't bear to break away from it.
I think we can all agree that the Michelin Guide isn’t particularly cool. Especially in our fair London, where, depending on your vibe and your set, ‘cool’ can be small plates at a Peckham brasserie named after a DJ, laksa obscura in a Zone 6 banlieue or some TikTok cheese-pull carbslop nightmare served out of a carnival truck in Camden Lock. It’s all a bit unserious in the city these days.
That’s why I’m drawn to Michelin’s profound self-seriousness. There’s something quite sweet and silly about the whole carry-on, this tyre company’s patrician commitment to verifying nice places to eat. Livestreams of their regional Guide launches – which happen everywhere from Ljubljana to Shanghai – are always starkly stiff, officious affairs: an awkward chef standing speechless on the stage in their new white jacket, like a deer in headlights, while the host introduces some random exec from San Pellegrino. It has all the enforced pomp and stifled enjoyment of a New Labour party conference.
There’s also something quite fascinating about the oblique one-to-three-star rating system, the Guide’s primary calling card (although they hand out ‘Bib Gourmands’ to nice cheap places, ‘plates’ to nice but not cheap places, and ‘green stars’ to ones that like to recycle). In my experience, the level of two-and three-star restaurants can be relatively similar, with some exceptional outliers. It’s almost always an exhaustive tasting menu format; caviar, wagyu, langoustines, turbot – and usually some form of mid-meal table panto, courtesy of their ruthlessly pleasant waitstaff. You will know that restaurant’s name for the rest of your life, either because your mind was blown by gastronomy, or because your current account was hit so hard that the bank froze your card. Or, if you’re truly blessed, both.
But the gulf between restaurants in the one-star bracket can be incomprehensibly large – particularly in London. On aesthetics alone, it’s deeply strange that St. JOHN’s school-dinner-core cuisine shares a bracket with KOL and Endo at the Rotunda, two places that exemplify the oft-derided tweezership that fine dining is known for. Per head, you could be paying £68 in east London (Casa Fofó), £148 in west (Pavyllon), £120 in south (Trinity) or £185 in central (Aulis), all without breaching the one-star barrier. Depending on how good you are at choosing them, dinner at a one-star could be anything from acceptable – even verging on tolerable – to the meal of the year, or maybe of one’s life. Even with accreditation from the world’s most powerful dining board, one-star is really no guarantee of a memorable night.
So what separates one from two?
Soho’s SOLA is, in my view, quite easily in the top one percent of London’s one-star restaurants. Imaginative dishes, excellent produce, smartly modern without being cloying or cringe, they produce food that clearly stands apart from the pack, and justifies its place in an elevated bracket.
Head chef Victor Garvey, is, like so many of his peers, openly covetous of that second star and singularly driven by the pursuit of it. He is also keenly aware of its mercuriality. Parsing from their vague set of criteria, Garvey contends, a restaurant and chef must have a strong identity. He thinks this may be the answer.
‘One of the interesting challenges that I set myself when we did the refurb and reopened is that I wanted to be unapologetically American. I think that’s maybe what Michelin is looking for as well; someone breaking the mould, doing their own identity. If there’s anything we haven’t done in the past that we’re currently doing, it’s probably that.’
Andy Hayler, food critic and master of the out-of-twenty scoring system, isn’t quite sure this is the case. The Guide states that ‘two Michelin stars are awarded when the personality and talent of the chef are evident in their expertly crafted dishes; their food is refined and inspired.’
Hayler, who has eaten at more Michelin-studded venues than perhaps anyone else on the planet, remains steadfastly bemused at what truly lies in the hearts of the inspectors. ‘Personality of the chef in the cuisine?’ Hayler highlights quizzically. ‘Nobody knows what that means, apart from Michelin.’
For him, the confusion is exemplified by the constant snubbing of his beloved Ritz Restaurant for two, or more, stars. At the time of writing, Hayler has reviewed the Ritz 49 times, although by the time this article is printed he will probably have crossed the half-century mark. He is convinced it’s the best restaurant in the UK.
Does he have any idea as to why they can’t seem to scale this particular summit?
‘Not the faintest idea. Who knows. It’s pointless me speculating. I would love to ask a Michelin inspector if I ever met one and they were being honest: tell me the real reason why the Ritz doesn’t have three stars.’
If there is anyone long in the tooth when it comes to achieving that second star, it’s Claude Bosi. A transplant from the terre gourmandise of Lyon, Bosi has achieved two stars at three separate restaurants – the now-closed but legendary Hibiscus, the newly-garlanded Brooklands at the Peninsula Hotel, and Bibendum. Bibendum, along with Brooklands, bypassed the usual stepping stone of one star and arrived straight in the Guide with two. He believes the key to it – and to most everything else – is consistency.
‘One-star you have to be the best in your category,’ he tells me. ‘Two-star you have to be consistent. Three-star – I wish I knew the recipe.’
To Bosi, the minute a cook wishes to become a ‘two-star chef’, it’s game over.
‘Don’t try to follow the trend or do what someone else is doing because they’ve got two stars. Never put a dish on the menu that you think will get you two stars. Put a dish on the menu because you think people will come back for it. For me this is the recipe. Buy the best produce you can afford and don’t cut corners. Respect the produce. That’s it.’
Simple, right?
While the capital’s one-star chefs wonder deep and long about what they can do to get two, Bosi was kept awake by what he needed to do to get three. Bibendum has long been touted for this ultimate accolade – Garvey tells me he thinks it is the pinnacle of fine dining in London. But in letting go a little, Bosi hopes it will come a bit more naturally.
Then there are the chefs and restaurants that really truly do not care about having two stars. Places that are satisfied with having a busy restaurant that turns out excellent food to repeat customers, an idea that runs anathema to the culture of striving that pervades cooking, as much as it does everything else.
Bruce Poole opened Chez Bruce in Wandsworth in 1995, on the site of what was Harveys, Marco Pierre White’s gamey cause célèbre that won its two stars before he moved on. They were awarded a star in 1999, much to Poole’s surprise.
‘It was not something we were gunning for, to be honest,’ he tells me. ‘Michelin is an arcane organisation, and one respects them because they have their standards, but nobody really knows what their criteria are. The criteria they advertise are so broad as to become meaningless really. That’s the way they want it.’
‘We’re very proud to have a star, it’s wonderful, we work very hard at maintaining it, but that’s kind of where we should be to be honest.’
While Michelin makes its criteria for two stars seemingly available to all and sundry, there can be a feeling that it’s not really sticking to its own rules in some cases. It’s what makes the whole thing so alluring in a way; there is an illusion of order masking the arbitrary whims of the inspectors, the laws of whom we mortals are allowed to know but never to understand, even if you dedicate your life to pursuing their favour.
A detractor of the system might say that it’s meaningless nonsense shrouded in theatrical opacity so as to re-sell its own grandeur, generation after generation. But like all secretive institutions revealed to be ultimately quite stupid – the royal family, the Garrick Club, GCHQ – the imaginary version of it is a lot more comforting than the reality. It’s comforting to chefs, because perhaps the all-seeing eye will choose them and grant them their salvation one day, and it will all have been worth it. For diners, it reminds us that, when we’re at a two-star restaurant, Amex quivering as it’s slotted into a card machine that reads £756.80, that it’s ok, because someone better than you has ordained it as money well spent. That’s why I love Bib Brother.
