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.’
