January 19, 2021 • 45 mins
The Michelin Guide is an institution. But why does the famous tire manufacturer even put this restaurant guide out? Listen in to find out.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's out there lurking
like an Internet weirdo, and this is stuff you should know. Yeah,
(00:24):
I've got a question for you. Okay, have you ever
been to a Michelin starred restaurant? Yes, I don't know
if I have or not. Surely you have, I don't know.
I mean I've never sought one out, sure, but I
may have accidentally done it. Uh, yeah, it's possible. Um,
(00:44):
there's there's a decent there's enough one star restaurants out
there that that is entirely possible. You've been to one
one star? Um? Actually, I've been to a three three
starred restaurant once. Yes. Well it was for a very
special occasions in my engagement. UM. I contacted our friend Hodgeman,
(01:06):
who was kind enough to contact his friend Adam Sacks,
who was a restaurant critic, UM, who pulled some strings
to get me reservations at Danielle in New York City.
And it was a three star restaurant. It was amazing.
It was just totally amazing. Yeah, I think, I mean,
(01:29):
I went to Atlanta's not on and you'll you know,
we'll go over all this in this episode, but Atlanta
is not covered under the Michelin Guide, but plains why
back Inalia doesn't have a star. Yeah, back Inalia or
Staple House, I could see having a star. I haven't
been there. Staple Houses the best meal I've ever had
in my life. What kind of food. It's a tasting menu. Um,
(01:52):
just like wings, mostly wings, ribs, other things you can taste.
This sounds pretty good. Uh, it's very renowned Uh in
Atlanta and around the world, Like people fly to Atlanta
to go to Stable House. It's that good, and it's
it's really something else. It's the best meal I've ever had.
And from the food to the service and the ambiance,
(02:16):
it was just It's a five star night, regardless of
what Michelin says. That's what my Yelp review is. But
doesn't that say everything about Michelin That the highest honor
you can get his three stars. It's like everybody else
is going with four or five. Michelin's like three tops,
you know. Yeah, But as as you'll see, this was
(02:37):
their star rating came out long before the Internet existed exactly.
Um and so you you might be like, Michelin, I've
never heard of that guy. But there's a tire company
called Michelan out there, and we are here to tell
you that they are one and the same company. That
the tire manufacturer is also the publisher of the world's
(03:00):
most renowned restaurant guide of all time. Yeah, and and
once we explain it, it's like it's one of those
things that at the same time you say, oh, well,
now I guess it makes sense, but also still very weird.
It is, but it is part of this guid Yeah,
(03:22):
there's tire cartoon, tire man. If you're like, oh, you know,
this is pretty haughty stuff. No, one of their symbols
is the Michelin man licking his lips and making the
okay symbol. So let's all maintain a little bit of
perspective here, Okay. Yeah, absolutely so. Um So with the
with the the connection to the tired company, I think
(03:44):
it's a pretty satisfying explanation. But all the way back
in what was it the nineteenth century, for sure, I
believe eight nine, um Andre and Eduard Michelin started making
tires and this is you know, they're making bicycle time
tis I believe at first, Um, but they ended up
making tires for just about everything, including trains. I did
(04:07):
not know that there were tires for trains, but rubber
tires for trains. UM just had no idea that that
ever existed. Maybe it's one of those things where they
tried it and it failed spectacularly, but it's still worth remarking.
I don't know if they're still around or not, but
these guys started making tires at a really good time
because UM, around that time, Uh, in addition to bikes,
(04:29):
you also started to need tires for your car, and
the Michelin brothers were there for it. Apparently France was
like one of the early hot spots of um, the
auto manufacturing world around the turn of the last century. Yeah,
they built more cars than anyone else between eighteen ninety
and sort of the mid to late nineteen forties, and
(04:50):
they sold a ton of tires, and um, the Michelin
man himself debuted in eight which is pretty remar parkable,
and there was I think, uh, I think it was
Dave Ru's right, Yeah, I believe so. Yeah, Dave can
point you and if you're in a place where you
can look this up on the internet. Um, just type
in bibendum b I b E N d U M,
(05:13):
which was the original name of the Michelin Man, which
comes from a Latin toast attributed to Horace uh Nun's sbendum.
Now is the time to drink and just look up
the poster. Type in bibendum poster and you'll see what
is exactly a very creepy poster of an early Michelin
(05:37):
entire man. It's um it is very creepy and sort
of it is it's like, what is wrong with all
the people at the table. There's something terribly wrong with everybody.
But apparently be Bendam is still his name in Europe,
or Bibbs affectionately. But um so the be bendum debuted
a little actually before the time of the guide. The
(05:59):
guide for made its appearance in nineteen hundred. And the
reason why the guide ever existed as far as the
Michelin Company's concerns, because they're the Michelin brothers were looking
for a way to um sell more tires by getting
people to drive more, and they figured, well, if we
make a guide book saying hey, you gotta check out
(06:19):
this place in Leone or Burgundy or Champagne Um or
sparkling Wine, like all these different places in France. Um.
Then they'll actually go out and take road trips to
these places. And that was the origin of the Michelin Guide,
was to tell people about all these different spots and
to make you know, to let you know about them,
(06:40):
and maybe you should go check this out. Yeah. So
um it was first given away for free when it debuted. Um, they,
like he said, we're just sort of listing restaurants where
you could go. But eventually in ninety six they started
recommending restaurants and uh, in nineteen thirty one is where
the star system was finally debuted, which is one star
(07:04):
a very good restaurant in its category, two stars excellent
cooking worth a detour, or three stars exceptional cuisine worth
a special journey. And uh, I really think they missed
a big opportunity by not rating these one to four tires. Uh.
Instead they did one to three stars. But as Day
points out, if you'll notice, what they're saying is, hey,
(07:27):
this restaurant, you should really drive to your Michelin tires
a lot, right, Yeah, maybe lay some rubber and do
some donuts on the way totally. So that language is
still in use today. Like those are the current explanation
for stars as well, even though the point isn't to
get you to use up your tires, Uma, but they
(07:50):
do still signify the same thing, where like a three
star restaurant to the to the Michelin the editors of
the Michelin Guide is it's with a trip in and
of itself, like it's worth getting in a plane and
flying to a different country to eat this meal at
this restaurant and then getting on a plane and flying back.
That's basically what a three star Michelin rating means. That's right. Um.
(08:14):
The first one outside of France was in Belgium in
nineteen o four. Uh, and then it kind of spread
through Europe with other guides North Africa. Um. They did
publish an English language version in nineteen o nine, but
it was just for France. Still. Um, America didn't get
its first guide and this is very surprising to me
(08:35):
until two thousand five when they started their guide to
New York City, because you know, they were like the
only good food in Americas in New York. Yeah, yeah,
and not only that, only good French restaurants are in
are what is in New York, in New York and
in America. You know, they took a lot of flak
for that first one. UM. In its defense, they didn't
(08:57):
they hadn't put together a team of American inspect or.
They had they had used some of their existing European
inspectors to go over and they have no idea what
they're doing aside from French cuisine apparently, so they did
just basically put an American guide book out to the
best fresh French restaurants in New York. That was the
first American guide. But they have since as we'll see,
like really kind of um kept pace a lot more
(09:21):
since then. Yeah, they've tried to. Uh. The modern guide
has more than forty restaurants in thirty four countries here
in the States. You have New York. Uh, they cover
the state of California, and then the cities of Chicago
and Washington, d C. And that's all as far as
the US goes so far. Uh. And they sell these
things now they sold um they've sold thirty million of
(09:44):
them over the last hundred years. Uh. And then next
year they are going to hit in Moscow. Um. They
have them for Tokyo, Hong Kong, uh, sort of other
places all over the world. Now, like you said, because
they're trying to I think shed and we'll talk more
about this, but shed a little bit more of that
stag snooty only French kind of thing, right, which is
(10:07):
why they're releasing a guide book on Topeka next year
as well. So, um, if you uh, if you open
up one of these Michelin guides or go online, that's
all online as well too. Um. When you when you
hear about three stars, like that must be you know,
a tremendous amount of detail explaining why and all that.
(10:28):
That is not how a Michelin guides work. There's a
tremendous amount of work and effort and thought that's put
into um, the kind of rating or symbol that a
restaurant gets in the Michelin guide. But the guide itself
is basically like just trust us. Here's one star or
two stars or three stars or no stars. Here's a
little right up about the restaurant, what you can expect, um,
(10:51):
the chef and what the chef's known for. And in
a couple of paragraphs they they make or break a
restaurant around the world old. Yeah, and they have UM
very I mean, if you don't know anything about it
and you just pop it open, like you said that,
you could get confused by all the weird symbols that
it uses to convey their qualities. UM. We'll get into
(11:12):
some of those in a minute. But UM, the star is,
you know, obviously the highest honor you can get. UM.
The criteria, there are five criteria to judge um these
restaurants for stars. It's not it's only about the food.
It's not the decord, it's not the service or the
ambiance or where it is. It's literally just the food
(11:32):
on the plate. Uh. And these five criteria, which are
quality of the ingredients, mastery of flavor and the cooking techniques, UH,
personality of the chef, UM, the harmony of flavors, and
then the consistency between the visits. UM. I also saw
value for money? Is that not one? I didn't see
that anywhere except in this thing that we were given.
(11:54):
Did you see that elsewhere? Now? I saw that that
would make much more sense for the bib rmand, which
we'll talk about. Yeah. I mean this was taken Uh.
I got mine from an interview within actual New Yorker. Okay, yeah,
I missed that part. So um, when you put all
those criteria together, and again, like you said, it's just
(12:14):
they're just talking about the food. But they're talking about
the food too, the point where a three star rating
means that that restaurant puts out consistently, over time, technically
scientifically perfect food no matter what you order, and no
(12:36):
matter what time of day, no matter what day of
the year, no matter who you are, you're going to
go in and get a perfect meal every time. That's
what a three star rating is. And there's a lot
of criticism of those criteria, as we'll see, but it
really is a remarkable, a remarkable thing that they're they're
basically saying, like, this is a perfect meal no matter
(12:59):
what you order. That's that's kind of hard to find
in other industries. You're not just like well like, um,
you know this is a this is a perfect shoe
that I'm wearing. You know, if it fits this This
is weird. You know, five boxes of criteria that are
being checked off no matter what what shoe model, shoe,
the shoe is going to be perfect, no matter what
(13:22):
that's You don't find that everywhere else. You know that
I really love that symbol or that analogy. Thank you.
Uh So, there are only a hundred three stars worldwide.
There are four hundred and fifty nine two stars and
two thousand, four d and eighty six one star restaurants.
A man, very famous man um chef name Elaine Dukasa.
(13:47):
How do you pronounce that? I think it's Ellen. I
think there's so much French in here that I'm gonna murder.
But um, he has the He has thirty six restaurants
in between them, twenty Michelin stars, including three three star restaurants,
which is quite an accomplishment. Um And I think we
(14:08):
should take a break maybe, and then we'll talk about
some of those more weird symbols in the guide. Does
that sound good? Lallah learn it's too with Joshua John. So,
(14:49):
the Michelin Guide is most well known for the stars
that it gives, right, um and, we should say, even
being mentioned in the Michelin Guide, it's not like a
comprehensive listing of restaurants in It's like, these are the
most noteworthy restaurants in New York and then the starred
ones are the best of the most noteworthy. Um So,
just being in there is is an honor um, but
(15:12):
they I guess it's kind of like recognition that there
are some restaurants out there there are still really good
and that you should still go check out. They just
don't necessarily check the boxes of the five criteria of
the perfect meal every single time, but it's still definitely
worth checking out. They came up with other criteria and
(15:33):
they found um. The first one, I believe, which it
came out in nineteen, was the Bib Gourmond that we
we mentioned a minute ago. Um and Bib being again
Bi Bendam or the Michelin Man. Yeah, this is like
his faves totally, as evidenced by him licking his lips.
Give me the okay symbol? Yeah, so um, you're right.
(15:57):
It started in the fifties as uh. The original symbol
is a little red are which stood for our E
p a s French for meal. I'm not going to
pronounce it, but it's basically Gorman means good little restaurant,
and it actually comes out it's it's in, it's the
(16:18):
regular guy, but it also comes out as its own
separate guide, Um, the Bib Gourman Guide after the Michelin Guide,
is published, and these are good quality, good value cooking.
And the idea is that you can go to a
bib Gourman restaurant and you can get what they say
is a three course meal. I also saw one of
(16:38):
the inspectors say like a main course, a dessert, and
a glass of wine, but like kind of like three
things for about forty dollars per person, which they consider
a good value. And that is if you're talking like
really really good stuff. Um and three thousand three six
restaurants right now are listed as bib Gourmand's. Yeah, so
(16:59):
it's a kind of like anybody can pick that up
and be like, let's see where we're gonna go to
dinner tonight. Basically, you know, um, forty dollars. You could
you can drop forty dollars a person at like um
out back pretty easily. So that that is pretty that
is pretty remarkable that they I guarantee it's eleven or
twelve bucks. You think, sure, let's look right now you talk.
(17:23):
I'm gonna look up how much a bloomen onion is.
I gotta say, I haven't been to an outback steakhouse since, uh,
I don't know, probably two decades but um, that bloomin
onion is bloom and delicious. Uh yeah, yeah, for sure
and delicious. You made a joke while we were on
UM on the road the other day about how we
should go to out Back and I was like, yeah,
(17:45):
blue an onion would be pretty good. But it turns
out it was just a joke and we didn't end
up there. Mm hmm. How's that for an anecdote? It's
good until the part where you didn't go and get
one of those bluemen onions on your road trip, right,
so you can get yourself bluemn onion for eight dollars
and nine cents I stay corrected, all right? That sounds
(18:06):
about right with tax though you're approaching ten. Yeah, and
if you want a regular size cheese fries it's eleven bucks.
So but you gotta get some extra sauce with that
bluemen onion, so that probably pushes it over ten unless
that's a freebe I don't know how they were gallon size?
Uh were you? Were you thinking the bluemen onion was
going to make an appearance in this episode on Michelin
(18:28):
Stars and did not? Um? I give that four tires though?
All right? So another symbol they have is the plate
to Michelin. How are you gonna pronounce that in French? Uh?
Las yet? Yeah? Las yet? That sounds about right. Uh.
This is a symbol of a dinner plate flanked by
(18:48):
a knife and a fork. This debuted in and this
is just good cooking. Uh it is not. It means
it doesn't have a star. It's not a bib gourmon.
But they call it quote simply good food. I'm not
entirely sure what the distinction is between the plate in
the bib gourmand rating it. I think it's money. Okay,
(19:09):
so this could still be expensive or is it cheaper
than the bib gourmand. No, no, I think the bib
gorman is specifically cheap, and the plate to Michelin can
be pricey but just not good enough for a star,
just not good enough. It's like a substar rating. I
guess substar, but more expensive than forty bucks a person. Okay,
(19:31):
otherwise it would be a big gormant. They also one
other way to kind of understand the bib gourmand is um.
We'll talk about the inspectors a little bit um in
a in a minute, but um, apparently the ratings are
they used a hive mind kind of thing where they'll
have different inspectors go to see what they think about
(19:52):
an inspector's rating of a restaurant, and then they kind
of pull them all together and the average is what
the what the restaurant gets. Um, that was one explanation
I saw, and by proxy, the bib Gourmand is say,
like one inspectors like, if you happen to be talking
to a Michelin inspectrum and said, what's your what's your
real favorite restaurant in this town, they'd probably give you
(20:14):
a big Gourmand recommendation. Not necessarily everyone in the Michelin
organization would would agree that it deserves a star three stars,
But this one inspectors like, this is really honestly the
best restaurant in town. Right, And then they would take
you into an alley and strangle you to death because
you're not supposed to know who I am write exactly.
You am so sorry, but you know too much like
(20:37):
the talent to Mr Ripley at the end, Oh spoiler?
Uh was it? No? It doesn't matter? Okay? Uh. You
have the Green Star, which debut just last year that
has restaurants and chefs who are practicing sustainable gastronomy UM,
sourcing locally, reducing waste, renewable energy in the restaurants. Uh.
(21:01):
Then you have the covert or covers uh. And that
is based I think. I mean, the food's got to
be good too, but it's really has to do with ambiance.
You can get one to five covers um, which means
like if you really want to go to a like
a special, like a romantic dinner or something, you might
want to look under the cover section. Yeah. And and
(21:22):
to make it even more arcane and obscure that you
can have five covers, but if it's in black ink,
it's not as good as a few covers in red ink. Yeah,
a little confusing. So if you have if there's a
place that has five covers in red ink, it's their
most charming, splendid um atmosphere of any restaurant they've ever encountered. Um.
(21:43):
But yet it does surely it has to do. It
takes the food into account to they're not going to
send you like a slop bucket that's really charming, but
they the whereas the stars are just the food. This
kind of takes into account the ambiance more. Yeah, and
then they started. You can see symbols for different specialties
in different regions, Like in Spain they'll have a little
(22:05):
toothpick and wine symbol for tapas like the best tapas places,
and the UK and Ireland they'll have beer mugs for
the best pubs. If you see little grape symbols, that
means someone might have a really good wine list, or
a cocktail glass obviously for good cocktails, or a sake bottle,
stuff like that. So if you see all these little symbols, obviously,
(22:26):
I'm sure there's a uh, what do you call it?
A legend? Yeah, legend It explains all this stuff. But
we're here to do that for you. Yeah, from what
I can tell, you have to be basically a trained
Michelin inspector to decipher some of this stuff once it
gets real deep. You know. Well, we've been seeing this
word inspector without explaining that, and people are probably going,
(22:48):
why do they keep talking about detectives, But we're not
talking about detectives. We're talking about inspectors, which is their
word for reviews. Yeah. Actually I don't even think they
call them that. They call them um anonymous restaurant. Oh no,
they do call them inspectors. I'm sorry I misread um
(23:10):
so well. And that makes a lot of sense too,
because there is this definite haughtiness to this whole thing.
But at the same time, from what Michelin has finally
started to choose to reveal about its inspectors, UM, they
do seem to actually be worthy of such a kind
of haughty title. UM. They are typically trained in and
(23:34):
having like real life experience in the hospitality industry, the
restaurant industry, UM, hotel industry, UM. And they will train
uh and actually go through this kind of um vetting
process for about a year basically that also includes an
apprenticeship because this is not the kind of thing where
(23:55):
you can be like, oh, these are the five criteria.
I totally understand this. It's a lot more nerve racking
than that. And also, if you ask me, the best
way to lose love of food would be to become
a Michelin restaurant inspector because it sounds like a lot
of not fun work. Yes, I would much rather just go, uh,
(24:18):
you know, enjoy a meal at a restaurant than have
to review it any day of the week. Yeah, there's
a cool article I read from Forbes from twenty nineteen
by Carla Allen Do called the Secret Life of an
Anonymous Michelin Restaurant Inspector, where they talked to this woman
who was an inspector and they remain anonymous even when
(24:41):
they're interviewed, which um, as we'll talk about in a bit,
is happening a little bit more over the past, like
ten to twenty years. But um, you know, she talks
about the rigors of the process, and you know how
you know, some of them are trained Somalia. Some of
them were chefs, but they were They're all all in
the restaurant industry at some point. Uh. And they get
(25:04):
there obviously their travel and hotel and their food all covered.
I was trying to find the pay. I saw some
guesses that it was maybe close to a hundred thousand
dollars a year. Uh to eat about three hundred meals
a year in these restaurants. UH. To not be allowed
to eat with your at least if you're reviewing the restaurant,
(25:24):
um too with a spouse or any other friend, like
you're supposed to be in there alone. Um, you gotta
take these pictures, which um, you know people do that
a lot now any day, so that's not gonna make
you stand out. But uh, the thing that I saw
was that the hardest part, at least from the point
of view of this one inspector, was maintaining your anonymity,
(25:45):
because I think they said you're allowed to tell your
closest family members, but really no one else. And in
this day of social media, it's I don't know how
much of a social media presence you can even have.
It would be a giveaway if you were, like, you know,
in in New York. Again, these ten meals out this week, right, Uh,
(26:06):
you know, I'm in Paris, now, I'm in Los Angeles, now,
I'm in Chicago, I'm in Tokyo. Like people would kind
of catch on. I think, yeah, you just yeah, I
think you're supposed to just be a lot more kind
of playing Jane or playing James. I guess I've never
heard of put that way, but I think I just
came upon something to where you're just kind of unremarkable
and not really noticeable. Um, but at the same time,
(26:29):
you're not sticking out because you're so unnoticeable, and you
just kind of have to live a life of anonimity, anonymity,
not just at work, but in general, like you're saying,
like it's a good grind, it sounds like a big grind,
like ten meals a day or ten meals a week,
UM very frequently you know, launch and dinner and we're
talking like, like you said, tasting menus or you know,
(26:52):
prefixed menus where they're eating like multiple course meals. UM.
I saw that that new worker interview with UM maxim
or m is what they nicknamed her UM the Michelin Inspector,
And I guess they order as many courses as the
restaurant offers, so if they have you know, soup, salad, appetizer, main, pasta, dessert,
(27:18):
like you would be expected to order a dish off
of each of those courses for lunch and then go
do the same thing for dinner five days a week,
three weeks out of the month, all year long. It
does sound like a grind for sure. Yeah, for by yourself,
eating by yourself, it's it can be kind of liberating
in fun, but after a while that is one of
(27:40):
the loneliest things you can possibly do. And the other
thing too is if it's if it's frowned upon for
you to bring a friend or a family member. Um,
I guarantee it's frowned upon for you to just be
sitting at your phone. So you're just sitting there like
a total weirdo by yourself at dinner, paying a tench
(28:00):
to the salt shaker. Basically is what you're what you're doing,
m Yeah, enjoying your world class meal. It does not
sound fun to me at all. I just rather it's
just one of those things I'd just rather be at
everyday person and just enjoyed on that level. Like I
feel bad for people who are so into making movies
that they can't enjoy a movie anymore. It's the same
exact thing You're like, I just want to be a
(28:21):
regular guy at a three star restaurants sitting there looking
at my phone. Right. I want to be able to
be on Twitter the whole time. All Right, I think
we should take another break and then we'll talk about this.
All sounds rosy, but we'll talk about some of the
criticisms right after this with Joshua. All Right, So we've
(29:12):
talked about the um kind of sun the prey, Well
did we sing praises? Well though they are definitely well
trained and all that. But but the thing is with
their inspectors, Michelin has always been the term is they're
famously anonymous, like they really, like you were saying, go
to great links to hide their their people, um and
(29:34):
their their identities. And a lot of people are like, well,
who are these people? Are they actually qualified? And that's
kind of caused a lot of controversy in itself. Yeah,
and I kind of more meant singing the praises of
the guide itself. But um, it's all become sort of
controversial over the years, and there's been a lot of
criticism levied. Um, like you mentioned first of all of
the inspectors. Uh, there have been some things that have
(29:55):
come out over the years. Uh. There was a book
written by an inspect yere Um after they left the job,
called The Inspector Sits Down at the Table by Pascal Remy,
where Pascal said, they're not nearly enough of us. They're
a way fewer. Um, we're not going to these restaurants
as much as we should. There have been restaurants that said, hey,
(30:16):
I was knocked down a star, and I know for
a fact that no one even came into the restaurant
this past year. Uh, no inspector came into our restaurant,
So how do we get not back a star? Uh?
And there's kind of a general I think within the industry,
there's a general feeling of this thing has too much
importance over and too much hold over us as chefs
(30:40):
and as restaurateurs, and we're kind of beholden to this
book to the point where people, Uh, I mean, there
was there was one chef who took his own life,
Bernard French chef Bernard Lusseau, who lost a star. He
had famously said, if I ever lose my stars, will
kill myself and uh, in two thousand three that happened
(31:03):
and he he shot himself in the head with a shotgun. Uh.
He very much was suffering from depression. So we're not saying,
you know, this is all at the hands of the
Michelin Guide, but it just sort of hammers home the
stress of trying to achieve and then maintain these stars. Yeah,
it's it goes both ways, right, Like, if you don't
(31:24):
have the stars yet and you're just starting out, you
want to get them or else people are gonna be like, well,
I thought you were like an up and coming superstar
where your Michelin stars, but then once you get them,
it's like it's just this albatross around your neck trying
to keep them. Um. And the guy who's restaurant you
me and I went to for our engagement, Danielle um Boullard.
(31:46):
I believe um he actually took uh or sorry ballued Um.
He took a kind of a cool attitude to the
whole thing. He had three stars and he got knocked
down to two after I had been there. Um. But
he he was basically like, look, you know, I mean,
we make a lot of changes to our menu, and
(32:09):
sometimes it's stuff that we want to lock in and
put on the menu. Anytimes it's us just messing around,
but our customers seem to really like it. Um. And
so if if that means that we're not putting out
perfect food every single time, but we're being more creative
and spontaneous, I'm okay with that. That was a very
(32:30):
very rare attitude from what I saw. More likely, if
you lose a star, you openly weep, like Gordon Ramsey
did when one of his restaurants, The London in New
York City. Um lost two stars. It had two stars
and it lost them both from one guy to the
next and he wept. Apparently he won't talk about it
if you ask him about it. Um. That is much
(32:52):
more the reaction to Michelin Stars than than Danielle's response,
which is kind of like, you know, I'll take it
or leave it. It just kind of ruined your life
one way or the other. And I think a lot
of people in the restaurant industry really resent that this
anonymous group of people whose qualifications they're not even sure of,
hold that kind of sway over their lives, over their
(33:14):
entire careers. You know. Yeah, Actually, now that I think
of it, Emily and I stayed at the London one time,
and I think we ate breakfast there. There you go
two stars. Yeah, I'm not sure when it was as
far as his stars coming and going, but uh yeah,
so we ate there. Another sort of rarity was when
(33:36):
French chef Sebastian bra said, Hey, Michelin, guide, can you
remove my stars and and take them out of there?
And and there's a couple of interesting quotes. He said,
after twenty years under the banner of three stars, I
wanted to find serenity, freedom and independence, but three Stars
represented a form of permanent and growing tension for me
(33:56):
and today I only want to be accountable to my customers,
so too much stress. And he was like, I want
to I want to experiment, and I want to try
different things, and I don't want to necessarily live my
or spend the rest of my career just trying to
maintain these stars. And by all accounts, it was a
pretty liberating experience for him. Yeah yeah, yeah, so um
(34:18):
that again, that also is very rare. For the most part,
it's like your your career is about trying to get
and then trying to keep those stars. Um, and just
the kind of the frustration that goes along with it
has has made a lot of people level accusations toward
the Michelin Guide, um, including that you know, they hand
(34:39):
out like that. One guy's expose said that they hand
out stars or maintain stars amongst some of their friends,
like very friendous French chefs. That is absolutely not fair.
But and there are definitely plenty of people out there,
um who just go to these restaurants so that they
can brag about having gone to this restaurant, and that
probably makes up a substantial part of the chef's clientell
(35:03):
or the restaurant's clientele, and I would guess if you're
a chef in this area, you probably hate people like that,
even though you know they're coming to your restaurant. They're
just being d bags. That's why they're there, is just
show off what a d bag they are. Can we
say that? Yeah? And I bet you half of those
people say like, oh my god, what one of the
(35:23):
best meals in half of them say I don't know
why this thing is three stars right? Exactly exactly. Yeah.
So there is that too it where people are like,
there's too much sway, are these people even like being
fair about this? And then the star system attracts people
who are just just there to say that they ate
at a restaurant and aren't actually enjoying the food. All
(35:44):
that exists. But it really seems over the last century
that the Michelin Guide has like it is legit Like
if you go to a three starred restaurant, you're probably
going to have the best meal that you've ever had
in your entire life. Like that's probably true, and that
in and of itself legitimizes it, or at least, you know,
(36:06):
lends credence to the idea that generally it's a legitimate
if not crushing um rating system. Yeah. Um, there's been
some other controversies over the years. In twenty nineteen, that
was a lawsuit filed by French chef Mark Verrat, who said,
(36:28):
my restaurant and Maison de how do you pronounce that
last part? Not boise Idaho, but I think boise boise,
Maison de boise. Yes, all right, let's go with that. Uh.
He was downgraded from three to two stars. He said, quote,
it's worse than the loss of my parents, which I'm
sure his parents were like Marcy for that. Uh. And
(36:51):
apparently the word on the street was the inspector accused
the kitchen of using just a very common English cheddar
cheese in a souffle dish that he says he was
sacar blue. He was really mad. He said, I demand
to see that report. Michelin says, I don't know who
you think you are, but you better watch it. You
(37:13):
can lose all your stars, buddy, but you you can't
see our reports. He filed the lawsuit. It became known
as cheddar Gate, and then the case is thrown out
when they couldn't produce evidence that actually hurt his business.
It actually helped his business. Because all the publicity, so
that report thing actually struck me as surprising. I saw
that they will share their reports. I mean, you know,
(37:35):
really yeah, they won't They obviously it won't say what
inspector came from or anything like that, but they that
restaurants who want to improve or get a starback or
whatever and want to know what happened, they will share
the reports. So I didn't understand that maybe what I
read was was wrong. But the Michelin Guide has responded
to this kind of like criticism and bad publicity. Um
(37:57):
you know, the suicide of um what was his last name? Yeah,
uh in two thousand three was really a dark cloud
that hung over the Michelin Guide. Um you know, the
criticism for basically raiding the best French restaurants in New
York and their first American guide, all this stuff really
amounted some bad press for the Michelin Guide and it
(38:19):
kind of evolved in the twenty one century to become
a lot more um worldly, a lot less franco centric,
a lot less stuffy, and to expand. And today actually
the country for the city with the largest number of
Stars among its restaurants is in Paris. It's tokyo. How
(38:42):
about that right to say tokyo. I've been saying it wrong. Um,
he says tokyo. Yeah, I've been saying it wrong for
almost fifty years. Yeah, I'm catching up to you. Forty
four for me because that was my first word. Actually, yeah,
I've been saying tokyo since I was in the womb.
(39:02):
So yeah, it's it's opened up to Asia. Um, it's
expanded in the US market. Like we mentioned before, they
they awarded their first ever start to a hawker stall,
which is uh Singapore street food, which is really cool. Um.
It was Hong Kong soya sauce, chicken, rice and noodle,
which Man, that thing got a star and I just
(39:24):
want to go there right now and eat it. The
other thing I want to eat is in edition um
to Taipei, they had a take out only street stall
that has one thing on the menu, which is a
steam pork bun with ground peanuts and cilantro. They've been
serving this for sixty years and they gave that a
(39:44):
bib gourman um whatever metal or the licking lips and okay,
licking lips. Guy, I want to eat that pork bun
more than anything. I can think of. The thing is chuck.
Is the thing that I hate almost as much as
waiting at a red light when there's no cars coming
(40:05):
from the other direction, is standing in line for food.
I hate that. I feel like such a chump, such
a sucker, and after X number of minutes, it is
not worth it. It doesn't matter how good the food is,
it's not worth it. Because I also usually don't like
the people I'm standing in line with, you know, like
(40:27):
a certain kind of like food fan or kinds that
will stand in line for an hour and a half.
They're They're also probably the ones that brag about the
number of stars or whatever. Um. So there's a lot
I don't like about that. And it turns out Michelin
has has heard my concerns. And Jiro Sushi um, the
(40:47):
the the sushi place that that they did the documentary about.
After that documentary, you could not still to this day,
I think that documentary is from like two thousand nine
or ten. To this day, you cannot get into Juro's.
It's a ten seat sushi bar that's probably the best
sushi in the world, um, and you just can't get in.
(41:08):
It's sorry, t s. You have to basically be ahead
of state or a celebrity these days. And it was
a ten seat, three star, three Michelin star sushi restaurant
in a train station in Tokyo um and Michelin took
its stars back because they say, the guide is meant for,
you know, any person to be able to go to
(41:30):
these restaurants, the restaurants they recommend anybody should be able
to get into. Like, yes, some people are going to
spend a much more substantial portion of their annual salary
than other people, but you should be able to get
into this place one way or another. And with Jero's
you just can't do that anymore. So they actually took
their stars back. They said, Jero, we wish you the
best of luck, not that you need it, but you
(41:52):
don't need these stars and you can't really have them
because you can't the average person can't get a seat
in your place anymore. Yeah, you know what this episode
has really made me want to do eat eating a restaurant. Yes, dude, yes,
this is very cruel to to put this one out
right now in retrospect, because all I want to do
is eat in a restaurant. Man, so bad. Just a
(42:14):
good multi course meal, starting out with like Martinier drink, Yes,
a bluemen onion in there somewhere, maybe a side of ranch.
I mean, like, yes, I cannot wait. It will happen
again one day, man, I know for sure. Okay okay, uh, Well,
since Chuck said for sure, that means, of course, everybody,
(42:36):
it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this. And
we've gotten a few of these lately, but this one
I tagged about a month ago from people who have
who finished their stuff. You should know Journey and listen
to all the episodes. Hey, everybody, I've done it. It
took me two years of listening anytime I was driving,
(42:57):
and I have to drive a lot for work, but
I finally gotten through the entire back catalog, going all
the way back to how Grassoline works. Those first episodes
were so not very good. I don't know what I'll
do in between new episodes now, but I wanted to
say thanks for the many, many hours of learning and
laughing and what has to be hundreds of Simpson's references.
(43:19):
At least my favorite episode was either nuclear Semiotics or
the uh the at Loft Pass mystery. But but I
need to thank Josh for introducing me to Teddy the Beaver.
Oh yeah, Teddy the baby beaver. He's the one that
built like the damn at that in the doorway of
the bedroom. Right. Oh was that? I think? So? He
(43:41):
was so cute, so cute. The greatest moment in the show, however,
was during what I recall uh to be the Beagle
Brigade episode, when Josh predicted COVID nineteen by talking about
someone's getting a disease by eating a bat. Yeah. A
lot of people say I predicted that. I called out
a magazine article that I read that predicted it. I
(44:03):
don't know if I particularly predicted it, but thank you
for that. And I don't even know if that's the
origin of COVID. Now, isn't that sort of a dispute?
I don't know. The last thing I heard was that
it was either a pangolin or a bat. I've heard
bat more than anything. You know what I'm saying, Well,
you're going to the wrong websites, buddy, so you need
(44:24):
to find the truth. That's right. Oh God, cartoon sweat,
He says. Also, sorry, Chuck, but shark Nato can suck it.
I wish you know, for sure, but my mind was
blown away when Josh said it. Thanks again for all
the hard work and I look forward to twelve more
years worth of episodes. And that is from Kyle in Phoenix, Arizona,
(44:46):
who I guess went to our live show there. He's
a great live show on Kellogg by the way, arm
of that Phoenix show. That was a good one. That
was a good show. I think that's the one where
we got Lasso's. Oh it absolutely was. I still got
that thing, Kathy with a K. That's right, I love
that lasso. H. Well, if you want to get in
touch with us, you can send us a email to
(45:08):
Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Know is a production of I Heeart Radio. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's out there lurking
like an Internet weirdo, and this is stuff you should know. Yeah,
(00:24):
I've got a question for you. Okay, have you ever
been to a Michelin starred restaurant? Yes, I don't know
if I have or not. Surely you have, I don't know.
I mean I've never sought one out, sure, but I
may have accidentally done it. Uh, yeah, it's possible. Um,
(00:44):
there's there's a decent there's enough one star restaurants out
there that that is entirely possible. You've been to one
one star? Um? Actually, I've been to a three three
starred restaurant once. Yes. Well it was for a very
special occasions in my engagement. UM. I contacted our friend Hodgeman,
(01:06):
who was kind enough to contact his friend Adam Sacks,
who was a restaurant critic, UM, who pulled some strings
to get me reservations at Danielle in New York City.
And it was a three star restaurant. It was amazing.
It was just totally amazing. Yeah, I think, I mean,
(01:29):
I went to Atlanta's not on and you'll you know,
we'll go over all this in this episode, but Atlanta
is not covered under the Michelin Guide, but plains why
back Inalia doesn't have a star. Yeah, back Inalia or
Staple House, I could see having a star. I haven't
been there. Staple Houses the best meal I've ever had
in my life. What kind of food. It's a tasting menu. Um,
(01:52):
just like wings, mostly wings, ribs, other things you can taste.
This sounds pretty good. Uh, it's very renowned Uh in
Atlanta and around the world, Like people fly to Atlanta
to go to Stable House. It's that good, and it's
it's really something else. It's the best meal I've ever had.
And from the food to the service and the ambiance,
(02:16):
it was just It's a five star night, regardless of
what Michelin says. That's what my Yelp review is. But
doesn't that say everything about Michelin That the highest honor
you can get his three stars. It's like everybody else
is going with four or five. Michelin's like three tops,
you know. Yeah, But as as you'll see, this was
(02:37):
their star rating came out long before the Internet existed exactly.
Um and so you you might be like, Michelin, I've
never heard of that guy. But there's a tire company
called Michelan out there, and we are here to tell
you that they are one and the same company. That
the tire manufacturer is also the publisher of the world's
(03:00):
most renowned restaurant guide of all time. Yeah, and and
once we explain it, it's like it's one of those
things that at the same time you say, oh, well,
now I guess it makes sense, but also still very weird.
It is, but it is part of this guid Yeah,
(03:22):
there's tire cartoon, tire man. If you're like, oh, you know,
this is pretty haughty stuff. No, one of their symbols
is the Michelin man licking his lips and making the
okay symbol. So let's all maintain a little bit of
perspective here, Okay. Yeah, absolutely so. Um So with the
with the the connection to the tired company, I think
(03:44):
it's a pretty satisfying explanation. But all the way back
in what was it the nineteenth century, for sure, I
believe eight nine, um Andre and Eduard Michelin started making
tires and this is you know, they're making bicycle time
tis I believe at first, Um, but they ended up
making tires for just about everything, including trains. I did
(04:07):
not know that there were tires for trains, but rubber
tires for trains. UM just had no idea that that
ever existed. Maybe it's one of those things where they
tried it and it failed spectacularly, but it's still worth remarking.
I don't know if they're still around or not, but
these guys started making tires at a really good time
because UM, around that time, Uh, in addition to bikes,
(04:29):
you also started to need tires for your car, and
the Michelin brothers were there for it. Apparently France was
like one of the early hot spots of um, the
auto manufacturing world around the turn of the last century. Yeah,
they built more cars than anyone else between eighteen ninety
and sort of the mid to late nineteen forties, and
(04:50):
they sold a ton of tires, and um, the Michelin
man himself debuted in eight which is pretty remar parkable,
and there was I think, uh, I think it was
Dave Ru's right, Yeah, I believe so. Yeah, Dave can
point you and if you're in a place where you
can look this up on the internet. Um, just type
in bibendum b I b E N d U M,
(05:13):
which was the original name of the Michelin Man, which
comes from a Latin toast attributed to Horace uh Nun's sbendum.
Now is the time to drink and just look up
the poster. Type in bibendum poster and you'll see what
is exactly a very creepy poster of an early Michelin
(05:37):
entire man. It's um it is very creepy and sort
of it is it's like, what is wrong with all
the people at the table. There's something terribly wrong with everybody.
But apparently be Bendam is still his name in Europe,
or Bibbs affectionately. But um so the be bendum debuted
a little actually before the time of the guide. The
(05:59):
guide for made its appearance in nineteen hundred. And the
reason why the guide ever existed as far as the
Michelin Company's concerns, because they're the Michelin brothers were looking
for a way to um sell more tires by getting
people to drive more, and they figured, well, if we
make a guide book saying hey, you gotta check out
(06:19):
this place in Leone or Burgundy or Champagne Um or
sparkling Wine, like all these different places in France. Um.
Then they'll actually go out and take road trips to
these places. And that was the origin of the Michelin Guide,
was to tell people about all these different spots and
to make you know, to let you know about them,
(06:40):
and maybe you should go check this out. Yeah. So
um it was first given away for free when it debuted. Um, they,
like he said, we're just sort of listing restaurants where
you could go. But eventually in ninety six they started
recommending restaurants and uh, in nineteen thirty one is where
the star system was finally debuted, which is one star
(07:04):
a very good restaurant in its category, two stars excellent
cooking worth a detour, or three stars exceptional cuisine worth
a special journey. And uh, I really think they missed
a big opportunity by not rating these one to four tires. Uh.
Instead they did one to three stars. But as Day
points out, if you'll notice, what they're saying is, hey,
(07:27):
this restaurant, you should really drive to your Michelin tires
a lot, right, Yeah, maybe lay some rubber and do
some donuts on the way totally. So that language is
still in use today. Like those are the current explanation
for stars as well, even though the point isn't to
get you to use up your tires, Uma, but they
(07:50):
do still signify the same thing, where like a three
star restaurant to the to the Michelin the editors of
the Michelin Guide is it's with a trip in and
of itself, like it's worth getting in a plane and
flying to a different country to eat this meal at
this restaurant and then getting on a plane and flying back.
That's basically what a three star Michelin rating means. That's right. Um.
(08:14):
The first one outside of France was in Belgium in
nineteen o four. Uh, and then it kind of spread
through Europe with other guides North Africa. Um. They did
publish an English language version in nineteen o nine, but
it was just for France. Still. Um, America didn't get
its first guide and this is very surprising to me
(08:35):
until two thousand five when they started their guide to
New York City, because you know, they were like the
only good food in Americas in New York. Yeah, yeah,
and not only that, only good French restaurants are in
are what is in New York, in New York and
in America. You know, they took a lot of flak
for that first one. UM. In its defense, they didn't
(08:57):
they hadn't put together a team of American inspect or.
They had they had used some of their existing European
inspectors to go over and they have no idea what
they're doing aside from French cuisine apparently, so they did
just basically put an American guide book out to the
best fresh French restaurants in New York. That was the
first American guide. But they have since as we'll see,
like really kind of um kept pace a lot more
(09:21):
since then. Yeah, they've tried to. Uh. The modern guide
has more than forty restaurants in thirty four countries here
in the States. You have New York. Uh, they cover
the state of California, and then the cities of Chicago
and Washington, d C. And that's all as far as
the US goes so far. Uh. And they sell these
things now they sold um they've sold thirty million of
(09:44):
them over the last hundred years. Uh. And then next
year they are going to hit in Moscow. Um. They
have them for Tokyo, Hong Kong, uh, sort of other
places all over the world. Now, like you said, because
they're trying to I think shed and we'll talk more
about this, but shed a little bit more of that
stag snooty only French kind of thing, right, which is
(10:07):
why they're releasing a guide book on Topeka next year
as well. So, um, if you uh, if you open
up one of these Michelin guides or go online, that's
all online as well too. Um. When you when you
hear about three stars, like that must be you know,
a tremendous amount of detail explaining why and all that.
(10:28):
That is not how a Michelin guides work. There's a
tremendous amount of work and effort and thought that's put
into um, the kind of rating or symbol that a
restaurant gets in the Michelin guide. But the guide itself
is basically like just trust us. Here's one star or
two stars or three stars or no stars. Here's a
little right up about the restaurant, what you can expect, um,
(10:51):
the chef and what the chef's known for. And in
a couple of paragraphs they they make or break a
restaurant around the world old. Yeah, and they have UM
very I mean, if you don't know anything about it
and you just pop it open, like you said that,
you could get confused by all the weird symbols that
it uses to convey their qualities. UM. We'll get into
(11:12):
some of those in a minute. But UM, the star is,
you know, obviously the highest honor you can get. UM.
The criteria, there are five criteria to judge um these
restaurants for stars. It's not it's only about the food.
It's not the decord, it's not the service or the
ambiance or where it is. It's literally just the food
(11:32):
on the plate. Uh. And these five criteria, which are
quality of the ingredients, mastery of flavor and the cooking techniques, UH,
personality of the chef, UM, the harmony of flavors, and
then the consistency between the visits. UM. I also saw
value for money? Is that not one? I didn't see
that anywhere except in this thing that we were given.
(11:54):
Did you see that elsewhere? Now? I saw that that
would make much more sense for the bib rmand, which
we'll talk about. Yeah. I mean this was taken Uh.
I got mine from an interview within actual New Yorker. Okay, yeah,
I missed that part. So um, when you put all
those criteria together, and again, like you said, it's just
(12:14):
they're just talking about the food. But they're talking about
the food too, the point where a three star rating
means that that restaurant puts out consistently, over time, technically
scientifically perfect food no matter what you order, and no
(12:36):
matter what time of day, no matter what day of
the year, no matter who you are, you're going to
go in and get a perfect meal every time. That's
what a three star rating is. And there's a lot
of criticism of those criteria, as we'll see, but it
really is a remarkable, a remarkable thing that they're they're
basically saying, like, this is a perfect meal no matter
(12:59):
what you order. That's that's kind of hard to find
in other industries. You're not just like well like, um,
you know this is a this is a perfect shoe
that I'm wearing. You know, if it fits this This
is weird. You know, five boxes of criteria that are
being checked off no matter what what shoe model, shoe,
the shoe is going to be perfect, no matter what
(13:22):
that's You don't find that everywhere else. You know that
I really love that symbol or that analogy. Thank you.
Uh So, there are only a hundred three stars worldwide.
There are four hundred and fifty nine two stars and
two thousand, four d and eighty six one star restaurants.
A man, very famous man um chef name Elaine Dukasa.
(13:47):
How do you pronounce that? I think it's Ellen. I
think there's so much French in here that I'm gonna murder.
But um, he has the He has thirty six restaurants
in between them, twenty Michelin stars, including three three star restaurants,
which is quite an accomplishment. Um And I think we
(14:08):
should take a break maybe, and then we'll talk about
some of those more weird symbols in the guide. Does
that sound good? Lallah learn it's too with Joshua John. So,
(14:49):
the Michelin Guide is most well known for the stars
that it gives, right, um and, we should say, even
being mentioned in the Michelin Guide, it's not like a
comprehensive listing of restaurants in It's like, these are the
most noteworthy restaurants in New York and then the starred
ones are the best of the most noteworthy. Um So,
just being in there is is an honor um, but
(15:12):
they I guess it's kind of like recognition that there
are some restaurants out there there are still really good
and that you should still go check out. They just
don't necessarily check the boxes of the five criteria of
the perfect meal every single time, but it's still definitely
worth checking out. They came up with other criteria and
(15:33):
they found um. The first one, I believe, which it
came out in nineteen, was the Bib Gourmond that we
we mentioned a minute ago. Um and Bib being again
Bi Bendam or the Michelin Man. Yeah, this is like
his faves totally, as evidenced by him licking his lips.
Give me the okay symbol? Yeah, so um, you're right.
(15:57):
It started in the fifties as uh. The original symbol
is a little red are which stood for our E
p a s French for meal. I'm not going to
pronounce it, but it's basically Gorman means good little restaurant,
and it actually comes out it's it's in, it's the
(16:18):
regular guy, but it also comes out as its own
separate guide, Um, the Bib Gourman Guide after the Michelin Guide,
is published, and these are good quality, good value cooking.
And the idea is that you can go to a
bib Gourman restaurant and you can get what they say
is a three course meal. I also saw one of
(16:38):
the inspectors say like a main course, a dessert, and
a glass of wine, but like kind of like three
things for about forty dollars per person, which they consider
a good value. And that is if you're talking like
really really good stuff. Um and three thousand three six
restaurants right now are listed as bib Gourmand's. Yeah, so
(16:59):
it's a kind of like anybody can pick that up
and be like, let's see where we're gonna go to
dinner tonight. Basically, you know, um, forty dollars. You could
you can drop forty dollars a person at like um
out back pretty easily. So that that is pretty that
is pretty remarkable that they I guarantee it's eleven or
twelve bucks. You think, sure, let's look right now you talk.
(17:23):
I'm gonna look up how much a bloomen onion is.
I gotta say, I haven't been to an outback steakhouse since, uh,
I don't know, probably two decades but um, that bloomin
onion is bloom and delicious. Uh yeah, yeah, for sure
and delicious. You made a joke while we were on
UM on the road the other day about how we
should go to out Back and I was like, yeah,
(17:45):
blue an onion would be pretty good. But it turns
out it was just a joke and we didn't end
up there. Mm hmm. How's that for an anecdote? It's
good until the part where you didn't go and get
one of those bluemen onions on your road trip, right,
so you can get yourself bluemn onion for eight dollars
and nine cents I stay corrected, all right? That sounds
(18:06):
about right with tax though you're approaching ten. Yeah, and
if you want a regular size cheese fries it's eleven bucks.
So but you gotta get some extra sauce with that
bluemen onion, so that probably pushes it over ten unless
that's a freebe I don't know how they were gallon size?
Uh were you? Were you thinking the bluemen onion was
going to make an appearance in this episode on Michelin
(18:28):
Stars and did not? Um? I give that four tires though?
All right? So another symbol they have is the plate
to Michelin. How are you gonna pronounce that in French? Uh?
Las yet? Yeah? Las yet? That sounds about right. Uh.
This is a symbol of a dinner plate flanked by
(18:48):
a knife and a fork. This debuted in and this
is just good cooking. Uh it is not. It means
it doesn't have a star. It's not a bib gourmon.
But they call it quote simply good food. I'm not
entirely sure what the distinction is between the plate in
the bib gourmand rating it. I think it's money. Okay,
(19:09):
so this could still be expensive or is it cheaper
than the bib gourmand. No, no, I think the bib
gorman is specifically cheap, and the plate to Michelin can
be pricey but just not good enough for a star,
just not good enough. It's like a substar rating. I
guess substar, but more expensive than forty bucks a person. Okay,
(19:31):
otherwise it would be a big gormant. They also one
other way to kind of understand the bib gourmand is um.
We'll talk about the inspectors a little bit um in
a in a minute, but um, apparently the ratings are
they used a hive mind kind of thing where they'll
have different inspectors go to see what they think about
(19:52):
an inspector's rating of a restaurant, and then they kind
of pull them all together and the average is what
the what the restaurant gets. Um, that was one explanation
I saw, and by proxy, the bib Gourmand is say,
like one inspectors like, if you happen to be talking
to a Michelin inspectrum and said, what's your what's your
real favorite restaurant in this town, they'd probably give you
(20:14):
a big Gourmand recommendation. Not necessarily everyone in the Michelin
organization would would agree that it deserves a star three stars,
But this one inspectors like, this is really honestly the
best restaurant in town. Right, And then they would take
you into an alley and strangle you to death because
you're not supposed to know who I am write exactly.
You am so sorry, but you know too much like
(20:37):
the talent to Mr Ripley at the end, Oh spoiler?
Uh was it? No? It doesn't matter? Okay? Uh. You
have the Green Star, which debut just last year that
has restaurants and chefs who are practicing sustainable gastronomy UM,
sourcing locally, reducing waste, renewable energy in the restaurants. Uh.
(21:01):
Then you have the covert or covers uh. And that
is based I think. I mean, the food's got to
be good too, but it's really has to do with ambiance.
You can get one to five covers um, which means
like if you really want to go to a like
a special, like a romantic dinner or something, you might
want to look under the cover section. Yeah. And and
(21:22):
to make it even more arcane and obscure that you
can have five covers, but if it's in black ink,
it's not as good as a few covers in red ink. Yeah,
a little confusing. So if you have if there's a
place that has five covers in red ink, it's their
most charming, splendid um atmosphere of any restaurant they've ever encountered. Um.
(21:43):
But yet it does surely it has to do. It
takes the food into account to they're not going to
send you like a slop bucket that's really charming, but
they the whereas the stars are just the food. This
kind of takes into account the ambiance more. Yeah, and
then they started. You can see symbols for different specialties
in different regions, Like in Spain they'll have a little
(22:05):
toothpick and wine symbol for tapas like the best tapas places,
and the UK and Ireland they'll have beer mugs for
the best pubs. If you see little grape symbols, that
means someone might have a really good wine list, or
a cocktail glass obviously for good cocktails, or a sake bottle,
stuff like that. So if you see all these little symbols, obviously,
(22:26):
I'm sure there's a uh, what do you call it?
A legend? Yeah, legend It explains all this stuff. But
we're here to do that for you. Yeah, from what
I can tell, you have to be basically a trained
Michelin inspector to decipher some of this stuff once it
gets real deep. You know. Well, we've been seeing this
word inspector without explaining that, and people are probably going,
(22:48):
why do they keep talking about detectives, But we're not
talking about detectives. We're talking about inspectors, which is their
word for reviews. Yeah. Actually I don't even think they
call them that. They call them um anonymous restaurant. Oh no,
they do call them inspectors. I'm sorry I misread um
(23:10):
so well. And that makes a lot of sense too,
because there is this definite haughtiness to this whole thing.
But at the same time, from what Michelin has finally
started to choose to reveal about its inspectors, UM, they
do seem to actually be worthy of such a kind
of haughty title. UM. They are typically trained in and
(23:34):
having like real life experience in the hospitality industry, the
restaurant industry, UM, hotel industry, UM. And they will train
uh and actually go through this kind of um vetting
process for about a year basically that also includes an
apprenticeship because this is not the kind of thing where
(23:55):
you can be like, oh, these are the five criteria.
I totally understand this. It's a lot more nerve racking
than that. And also, if you ask me, the best
way to lose love of food would be to become
a Michelin restaurant inspector because it sounds like a lot
of not fun work. Yes, I would much rather just go, uh,
(24:18):
you know, enjoy a meal at a restaurant than have
to review it any day of the week. Yeah, there's
a cool article I read from Forbes from twenty nineteen
by Carla Allen Do called the Secret Life of an
Anonymous Michelin Restaurant Inspector, where they talked to this woman
who was an inspector and they remain anonymous even when
(24:41):
they're interviewed, which um, as we'll talk about in a bit,
is happening a little bit more over the past, like
ten to twenty years. But um, you know, she talks
about the rigors of the process, and you know how
you know, some of them are trained Somalia. Some of
them were chefs, but they were They're all all in
the restaurant industry at some point. Uh. And they get
(25:04):
there obviously their travel and hotel and their food all covered.
I was trying to find the pay. I saw some
guesses that it was maybe close to a hundred thousand
dollars a year. Uh to eat about three hundred meals
a year in these restaurants. UH. To not be allowed
to eat with your at least if you're reviewing the restaurant,
(25:24):
um too with a spouse or any other friend, like
you're supposed to be in there alone. Um, you gotta
take these pictures, which um, you know people do that
a lot now any day, so that's not gonna make
you stand out. But uh, the thing that I saw
was that the hardest part, at least from the point
of view of this one inspector, was maintaining your anonymity,
(25:45):
because I think they said you're allowed to tell your
closest family members, but really no one else. And in
this day of social media, it's I don't know how
much of a social media presence you can even have.
It would be a giveaway if you were, like, you know,
in in New York. Again, these ten meals out this week, right, Uh,
(26:06):
you know, I'm in Paris, now, I'm in Los Angeles, now,
I'm in Chicago, I'm in Tokyo. Like people would kind
of catch on. I think, yeah, you just yeah, I
think you're supposed to just be a lot more kind
of playing Jane or playing James. I guess I've never
heard of put that way, but I think I just
came upon something to where you're just kind of unremarkable
and not really noticeable. Um, but at the same time,
(26:29):
you're not sticking out because you're so unnoticeable, and you
just kind of have to live a life of anonimity, anonymity,
not just at work, but in general, like you're saying,
like it's a good grind, it sounds like a big grind,
like ten meals a day or ten meals a week,
UM very frequently you know, launch and dinner and we're
talking like, like you said, tasting menus or you know,
(26:52):
prefixed menus where they're eating like multiple course meals. UM.
I saw that that new worker interview with UM maxim
or m is what they nicknamed her UM the Michelin Inspector,
And I guess they order as many courses as the
restaurant offers, so if they have you know, soup, salad, appetizer, main, pasta, dessert,
(27:18):
like you would be expected to order a dish off
of each of those courses for lunch and then go
do the same thing for dinner five days a week,
three weeks out of the month, all year long. It
does sound like a grind for sure. Yeah, for by yourself,
eating by yourself, it's it can be kind of liberating
in fun, but after a while that is one of
(27:40):
the loneliest things you can possibly do. And the other
thing too is if it's if it's frowned upon for
you to bring a friend or a family member. Um,
I guarantee it's frowned upon for you to just be
sitting at your phone. So you're just sitting there like
a total weirdo by yourself at dinner, paying a tench
(28:00):
to the salt shaker. Basically is what you're what you're doing,
m Yeah, enjoying your world class meal. It does not
sound fun to me at all. I just rather it's
just one of those things I'd just rather be at
everyday person and just enjoyed on that level. Like I
feel bad for people who are so into making movies
that they can't enjoy a movie anymore. It's the same
exact thing You're like, I just want to be a
(28:21):
regular guy at a three star restaurants sitting there looking
at my phone. Right. I want to be able to
be on Twitter the whole time. All Right, I think
we should take another break and then we'll talk about this.
All sounds rosy, but we'll talk about some of the
criticisms right after this with Joshua. All Right, So we've
(29:12):
talked about the um kind of sun the prey, Well
did we sing praises? Well though they are definitely well
trained and all that. But but the thing is with
their inspectors, Michelin has always been the term is they're
famously anonymous, like they really, like you were saying, go
to great links to hide their their people, um and
(29:34):
their their identities. And a lot of people are like, well,
who are these people? Are they actually qualified? And that's
kind of caused a lot of controversy in itself. Yeah,
and I kind of more meant singing the praises of
the guide itself. But um, it's all become sort of
controversial over the years, and there's been a lot of
criticism levied. Um, like you mentioned first of all of
the inspectors. Uh, there have been some things that have
(29:55):
come out over the years. Uh. There was a book
written by an inspect yere Um after they left the job,
called The Inspector Sits Down at the Table by Pascal Remy,
where Pascal said, they're not nearly enough of us. They're
a way fewer. Um, we're not going to these restaurants
as much as we should. There have been restaurants that said, hey,
(30:16):
I was knocked down a star, and I know for
a fact that no one even came into the restaurant
this past year. Uh, no inspector came into our restaurant,
So how do we get not back a star? Uh?
And there's kind of a general I think within the industry,
there's a general feeling of this thing has too much
importance over and too much hold over us as chefs
(30:40):
and as restaurateurs, and we're kind of beholden to this
book to the point where people, Uh, I mean, there
was there was one chef who took his own life,
Bernard French chef Bernard Lusseau, who lost a star. He
had famously said, if I ever lose my stars, will
kill myself and uh, in two thousand three that happened
(31:03):
and he he shot himself in the head with a shotgun. Uh.
He very much was suffering from depression. So we're not saying,
you know, this is all at the hands of the
Michelin Guide, but it just sort of hammers home the
stress of trying to achieve and then maintain these stars. Yeah,
it's it goes both ways, right, Like, if you don't
(31:24):
have the stars yet and you're just starting out, you
want to get them or else people are gonna be like, well,
I thought you were like an up and coming superstar
where your Michelin stars, but then once you get them,
it's like it's just this albatross around your neck trying
to keep them. Um. And the guy who's restaurant you
me and I went to for our engagement, Danielle um Boullard.
(31:46):
I believe um he actually took uh or sorry ballued Um.
He took a kind of a cool attitude to the
whole thing. He had three stars and he got knocked
down to two after I had been there. Um. But
he he was basically like, look, you know, I mean,
we make a lot of changes to our menu, and
(32:09):
sometimes it's stuff that we want to lock in and
put on the menu. Anytimes it's us just messing around,
but our customers seem to really like it. Um. And
so if if that means that we're not putting out
perfect food every single time, but we're being more creative
and spontaneous, I'm okay with that. That was a very
(32:30):
very rare attitude from what I saw. More likely, if
you lose a star, you openly weep, like Gordon Ramsey
did when one of his restaurants, The London in New
York City. Um lost two stars. It had two stars
and it lost them both from one guy to the
next and he wept. Apparently he won't talk about it
if you ask him about it. Um. That is much
(32:52):
more the reaction to Michelin Stars than than Danielle's response,
which is kind of like, you know, I'll take it
or leave it. It just kind of ruined your life
one way or the other. And I think a lot
of people in the restaurant industry really resent that this
anonymous group of people whose qualifications they're not even sure of,
hold that kind of sway over their lives, over their
(33:14):
entire careers. You know. Yeah, Actually, now that I think
of it, Emily and I stayed at the London one time,
and I think we ate breakfast there. There you go
two stars. Yeah, I'm not sure when it was as
far as his stars coming and going, but uh yeah,
so we ate there. Another sort of rarity was when
(33:36):
French chef Sebastian bra said, Hey, Michelin, guide, can you
remove my stars and and take them out of there?
And and there's a couple of interesting quotes. He said,
after twenty years under the banner of three stars, I
wanted to find serenity, freedom and independence, but three Stars
represented a form of permanent and growing tension for me
(33:56):
and today I only want to be accountable to my customers,
so too much stress. And he was like, I want
to I want to experiment, and I want to try
different things, and I don't want to necessarily live my
or spend the rest of my career just trying to
maintain these stars. And by all accounts, it was a
pretty liberating experience for him. Yeah yeah, yeah, so um
(34:18):
that again, that also is very rare. For the most part,
it's like your your career is about trying to get
and then trying to keep those stars. Um, and just
the kind of the frustration that goes along with it
has has made a lot of people level accusations toward
the Michelin Guide, um, including that you know, they hand
(34:39):
out like that. One guy's expose said that they hand
out stars or maintain stars amongst some of their friends,
like very friendous French chefs. That is absolutely not fair.
But and there are definitely plenty of people out there,
um who just go to these restaurants so that they
can brag about having gone to this restaurant, and that
probably makes up a substantial part of the chef's clientell
(35:03):
or the restaurant's clientele, and I would guess if you're
a chef in this area, you probably hate people like that,
even though you know they're coming to your restaurant. They're
just being d bags. That's why they're there, is just
show off what a d bag they are. Can we
say that? Yeah? And I bet you half of those
people say like, oh my god, what one of the
(35:23):
best meals in half of them say I don't know
why this thing is three stars right? Exactly exactly. Yeah.
So there is that too it where people are like,
there's too much sway, are these people even like being
fair about this? And then the star system attracts people
who are just just there to say that they ate
at a restaurant and aren't actually enjoying the food. All
(35:44):
that exists. But it really seems over the last century
that the Michelin Guide has like it is legit Like
if you go to a three starred restaurant, you're probably
going to have the best meal that you've ever had
in your entire life. Like that's probably true, and that
in and of itself legitimizes it, or at least, you know,
(36:06):
lends credence to the idea that generally it's a legitimate
if not crushing um rating system. Yeah. Um, there's been
some other controversies over the years. In twenty nineteen, that
was a lawsuit filed by French chef Mark Verrat, who said,
(36:28):
my restaurant and Maison de how do you pronounce that
last part? Not boise Idaho, but I think boise boise,
Maison de boise. Yes, all right, let's go with that. Uh.
He was downgraded from three to two stars. He said, quote,
it's worse than the loss of my parents, which I'm
sure his parents were like Marcy for that. Uh. And
(36:51):
apparently the word on the street was the inspector accused
the kitchen of using just a very common English cheddar
cheese in a souffle dish that he says he was
sacar blue. He was really mad. He said, I demand
to see that report. Michelin says, I don't know who
you think you are, but you better watch it. You
(37:13):
can lose all your stars, buddy, but you you can't
see our reports. He filed the lawsuit. It became known
as cheddar Gate, and then the case is thrown out
when they couldn't produce evidence that actually hurt his business.
It actually helped his business. Because all the publicity, so
that report thing actually struck me as surprising. I saw
that they will share their reports. I mean, you know,
(37:35):
really yeah, they won't They obviously it won't say what
inspector came from or anything like that, but they that
restaurants who want to improve or get a starback or
whatever and want to know what happened, they will share
the reports. So I didn't understand that maybe what I
read was was wrong. But the Michelin Guide has responded
to this kind of like criticism and bad publicity. Um
(37:57):
you know, the suicide of um what was his last name? Yeah,
uh in two thousand three was really a dark cloud
that hung over the Michelin Guide. Um you know, the
criticism for basically raiding the best French restaurants in New
York and their first American guide, all this stuff really
amounted some bad press for the Michelin Guide and it
(38:19):
kind of evolved in the twenty one century to become
a lot more um worldly, a lot less franco centric,
a lot less stuffy, and to expand. And today actually
the country for the city with the largest number of
Stars among its restaurants is in Paris. It's tokyo. How
(38:42):
about that right to say tokyo. I've been saying it wrong. Um,
he says tokyo. Yeah, I've been saying it wrong for
almost fifty years. Yeah, I'm catching up to you. Forty
four for me because that was my first word. Actually, yeah,
I've been saying tokyo since I was in the womb.
(39:02):
So yeah, it's it's opened up to Asia. Um, it's
expanded in the US market. Like we mentioned before, they
they awarded their first ever start to a hawker stall,
which is uh Singapore street food, which is really cool. Um.
It was Hong Kong soya sauce, chicken, rice and noodle,
which Man, that thing got a star and I just
(39:24):
want to go there right now and eat it. The
other thing I want to eat is in edition um
to Taipei, they had a take out only street stall
that has one thing on the menu, which is a
steam pork bun with ground peanuts and cilantro. They've been
serving this for sixty years and they gave that a
(39:44):
bib gourman um whatever metal or the licking lips and okay,
licking lips. Guy, I want to eat that pork bun
more than anything. I can think of. The thing is chuck.
Is the thing that I hate almost as much as
waiting at a red light when there's no cars coming
(40:05):
from the other direction, is standing in line for food.
I hate that. I feel like such a chump, such
a sucker, and after X number of minutes, it is
not worth it. It doesn't matter how good the food is,
it's not worth it. Because I also usually don't like
the people I'm standing in line with, you know, like
(40:27):
a certain kind of like food fan or kinds that
will stand in line for an hour and a half.
They're They're also probably the ones that brag about the
number of stars or whatever. Um. So there's a lot
I don't like about that. And it turns out Michelin
has has heard my concerns. And Jiro Sushi um, the
(40:47):
the the sushi place that that they did the documentary about.
After that documentary, you could not still to this day,
I think that documentary is from like two thousand nine
or ten. To this day, you cannot get into Juro's.
It's a ten seat sushi bar that's probably the best
sushi in the world, um, and you just can't get in.
(41:08):
It's sorry, t s. You have to basically be ahead
of state or a celebrity these days. And it was
a ten seat, three star, three Michelin star sushi restaurant
in a train station in Tokyo um and Michelin took
its stars back because they say, the guide is meant for,
you know, any person to be able to go to
(41:30):
these restaurants, the restaurants they recommend anybody should be able
to get into. Like, yes, some people are going to
spend a much more substantial portion of their annual salary
than other people, but you should be able to get
into this place one way or another. And with Jero's
you just can't do that anymore. So they actually took
their stars back. They said, Jero, we wish you the
best of luck, not that you need it, but you
(41:52):
don't need these stars and you can't really have them
because you can't the average person can't get a seat
in your place anymore. Yeah, you know what this episode
has really made me want to do eat eating a restaurant. Yes, dude, yes,
this is very cruel to to put this one out
right now in retrospect, because all I want to do
is eat in a restaurant. Man, so bad. Just a
(42:14):
good multi course meal, starting out with like Martinier drink, Yes,
a bluemen onion in there somewhere, maybe a side of ranch.
I mean, like, yes, I cannot wait. It will happen
again one day, man, I know for sure. Okay okay, uh, Well,
since Chuck said for sure, that means, of course, everybody,
(42:36):
it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this. And
we've gotten a few of these lately, but this one
I tagged about a month ago from people who have
who finished their stuff. You should know Journey and listen
to all the episodes. Hey, everybody, I've done it. It
took me two years of listening anytime I was driving,
(42:57):
and I have to drive a lot for work, but
I finally gotten through the entire back catalog, going all
the way back to how Grassoline works. Those first episodes
were so not very good. I don't know what I'll
do in between new episodes now, but I wanted to
say thanks for the many, many hours of learning and
laughing and what has to be hundreds of Simpson's references.
(43:19):
At least my favorite episode was either nuclear Semiotics or
the uh the at Loft Pass mystery. But but I
need to thank Josh for introducing me to Teddy the Beaver.
Oh yeah, Teddy the baby beaver. He's the one that
built like the damn at that in the doorway of
the bedroom. Right. Oh was that? I think? So? He
(43:41):
was so cute, so cute. The greatest moment in the show, however,
was during what I recall uh to be the Beagle
Brigade episode, when Josh predicted COVID nineteen by talking about
someone's getting a disease by eating a bat. Yeah. A
lot of people say I predicted that. I called out
a magazine article that I read that predicted it. I
(44:03):
don't know if I particularly predicted it, but thank you
for that. And I don't even know if that's the
origin of COVID. Now, isn't that sort of a dispute?
I don't know. The last thing I heard was that
it was either a pangolin or a bat. I've heard
bat more than anything. You know what I'm saying, Well,
you're going to the wrong websites, buddy, so you need
(44:24):
to find the truth. That's right. Oh God, cartoon sweat,
He says. Also, sorry, Chuck, but shark Nato can suck it.
I wish you know, for sure, but my mind was
blown away when Josh said it. Thanks again for all
the hard work and I look forward to twelve more
years worth of episodes. And that is from Kyle in Phoenix, Arizona,
(44:46):
who I guess went to our live show there. He's
a great live show on Kellogg by the way, arm
of that Phoenix show. That was a good one. That
was a good show. I think that's the one where
we got Lasso's. Oh it absolutely was. I still got
that thing, Kathy with a K. That's right, I love
that lasso. H. Well, if you want to get in
touch with us, you can send us a email to
(45:08):
Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Know is a production of I Heeart Radio. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
Show Links
Order Our BookRSSStoreSYSK ArmyAboutPopular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Death, Sex & Money
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.