You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Guess what mango was that?
Well?
All right, well, I know you're a huge Katy Perry fan.
Right, Well not really.
Well, you're at least familiar with the twenty seventeen songs she did with Migos called Bone Appetite, right like big One. No, real, this is it. We may need to do a different episode. That's fine. I know it's no firework. But the whole
song is basically this extended metaphor. You didn't know she was into this, right, extended metaphors where Katy Perry is describing herself as a delicious meal in lots of creative ways, and at one point in the song, she says, I'm a five star Michelin, a five star Micheline Mengo.
Five stars is really confident.
No, it's not confident. It's ridiculous because the Micheline star rating only goes up to three stars. And poor Katy Perry actually didn't realize that sousicians don't fact check their songs. I know, it's very very disappointing.
So wait, well, why does Michelin only use three stars and not like five or ten.
Well, the Michelin Star system is full of all kinds of arbitrary, opaque, and frankly mystifying rules, and it's kind of its whole thing. That's why they do this, and that's what we're getting into in this episode.
Or in the words of Katy Perry Bone Petite.
I knew you were a big fan.
Welcome back to Part Time Genius. I'm will and as always, I'm here with my good friend Mango, and somewhere behind that big booth is our pal Dylan, who I think is trolling us because he's decorated that booth with all these posters of the see I think I see the Pillsbury dough Boy, the Staypuff marshmallow Man, even that character from what was it, Big Hero six, Big Hero six?
Pretty It is definitely trolling us because he's got every other white puffy character from pop culture except the Michelin Man. Also, where did he get so many Pilsburg Dobles.
He's impressive. He's very into like the you know, finding the sales.
Yeah, that's probably where he really goes all out.
Well, I'm really excited to be doing this show together, but I'm curious what made you think to do this episode on Michelin Stars.
So I watched this Bradley Cooper movie on a flight.
It's called Burnt.
You've seen it, And there's this whole thing where they're talking about how to spot these like elite reviewers from Michelin whatever, and they come in pairs and order in specific ways, and I kind of want to see how much of.
That was true. So that was part of it.
Plus, I know your parents are foodies and they used to have all those menus on their porch from restaurants.
I willed it.
Yeah, And I just thought it to be a fun topic.
Yeah, I'm excited to dive in. So why don't we go back to the beginning just to think about where the name comes from. So basically, we're going way back to eighteen eighty nine and Michelin started out as a tire manufacturing company, which I think a lot of people know, but it was the brothers Andre and Eduard Michelin, and they took over their grandfather's struggling manufacturing business and they started producing tires and they were really clever, so they
pat into this removable pneumatic bike tire. They invented the first automobile tire, and they even made rubber train.
Tires, tires for trains.
That's supposedly why the Paris Metro used to be so quiet. I'd never heard of this before, but just then, looking to this, it's pretty neat and it doesn't screech like New York's. But anyway, in eighteen eighty nine, Michelin debuts their puffy mascot, the Michelin Man. Way back in eighteen eighty nine.
Yeah, as Dylan pointed out, looks a whole lot like the stay Puffed guy from Ghostbusters.
Yep, except he's not made of marshmallows. He's actually made of tires. And apparently Michelin tires used to be white. And one day Eduard looked at this pile of tires and he was like, hey, Andre, if that pile of tires had arms, it will look like a man. So yeah, that's that's how this stuff comes to life.
Yeah, I mean, I guess anything's a mascot if you put arms on it.
And they had this kind of funny concept for it. They named their tire man Bibindam because that comes from the Latin phrase nunc s bibindum which means now is the time to drink. Because in these earliest ads, if you look at them, he's actually holding up this goblet of nails and broken glass, because the whole concept was they wanted to show that michelin tires were unfazed by obstacles on the road.
So in this super weird scenario, he's drinking nails and broken glass.
Yes, the tire man, that's what it is.
Okay, So Michelin man is like this well fed, indestructible bon Vivonne, the kind of guy who can eatn drink all day and night and just keep going.
It's such as it's impressive. Yeah, it's a very French illustration of longevity. So anyway, in nineteen hundred, Michelin begins publishing these free travel guides to France and eventually they make guides for other parts of Europe. And it's a pretty smart play because Michelin's basically acting like tourism pioneers, so they're encouraging ordinary people to take longer and longer
road trips. As you know, of course, helps boost hire sales, and from the beginning of these tourism road trip guys included restaurant recommendations.
So I guess these early French travelers weren't like eating handfuls of Twizzlers or beef jerky on they.
Really missing out, really really missing out. And Michelin was smart about their review system too. The reviews were always conducted anonymously, and so this gave Micheline this extra layer of credibility with customers. They weren't just handing out good reviews to friends. Then you fast forward to nineteen twenty six when the stars first began appearing. So this is a quarter of a century later, but at that time they're all awarded to restaurants in France, and so initially
they were just starred and non starred restaurants. But then in the nineteen thirties, Michelin created the three star system that remains in place today.
So there's no real reason that's three stars.
They just kind of decided that. I mean, they're French, so they have to do something. It's a little different. I don't know if you've ever been to a Michelin star restaurant, Mango a one or two or I got a three Mango.
Listen, Milo's a three star restaurant.
The fast food burger joint. I think it was two stars, and still they started putting that extra nub of meat on the paddy. It's just a little bonus nub, and then that got them to three. No, actually I don't think they have any stars mego.
So I think what's funny about the whole Michelin Star thing is how vague the distinctions are between sort of the one, two and three star establishments.
What do you mean by that?
So apparently one Michelin Star is award to restaurants using top quality ingredients, where dishes with these distinct flavors are prepared to a consistently high standard.
Yeah that sounds good.
Yeah, it totally sounds good. And then two Michelin Stars are awarded when the personality and talent of the chef are evident in these expertly crafted dishes and their food is refined and inspired.
M hm also sounds good, m H.
And three Michelin Stars, the highest award, is given for the superlative cooking of chefs at the peak of their profession. The cooking is to an art form, and some of their dishes are destined to become classics.
That also sounds good. Mengo like system that's the things.
They all sound good, I mean, and they also kind of sound the same, right, like like one star is good, two stars is more good, and three stars is just like more and more good.
Seriously, it's good.
Yeah, So how do you eat a meal and decide that the food is refined and inspired versus you know, a meal that's an art form, right? How do they even make these judgments?
Well, I'm glad you asked that, mango.
Yeah, it's almost like I set you off.
So the judging is done by anonymous Michelin inspectors, all of whom work full time and have prior restaurant and hospitality experience. Multiple inspectors dine at a restaurant under consideration and then they talk about these ratings together, so it's not just one person that's passing judgment on a place after a single meal. Inspectors visit multiple times for different meals with the goal of experiencing the full range of
the menu. So it's a really thorough process. And Michigan claims there is quote no seqk mathematical formula and that decor degree of formality, type of cuisine, like all of that that they really don't matter, of course, there are five specific criteria the judges used to award stars. So here they are. The first is quality of the ingredients, The second is the harmony of flavors. Then you have the mastery of culinary techniques. Fourth is the personality of
the chef is expressed through their cuisine. And then the fifth is consistency of the above but across the entire menu and over time. And it's worth mentioning there's also this thing called the bib Gourmand designation and it's given to the most affordable restaurants that offer high value for the money. And I have wondered this before, because you'll notice this in cities. Sometimes it'll be like a diner or something like that that'll end up with a Michelin Star.
I do think that's pretty cool to think they think about it this way. But all of this judging has done completely anonymously, and that just actually seems crazy to me, Like, I don't understand how these inspectors could keep their identity a secret if they're hopping around to all the world's best restaurants multiple times a year.
Yeah, and that's exactly the part I wanted to dig into. So why don't we tackle that after a break sounds good.
Welcome back to part time Genius, where we're talking about Michelin stars and why chefs are so darn thirsty for them. So, Magel, I think you were just about to tell us how the food criticism at Michelin works.
That's right. So in two thousand and nine, The New Yorker published this profile of a New York inspector and it's super fun and cloak and dagger. The inspector's pseudonym was Maxine, and the first really interesting thing is that she said, most Michelin executives don't even know who the inspectors are.
Oh wow.
In fact, inspectors are told to keep their work secret from their friends and even from their parents.
I have to be honest, I don't think I could keep that secret from my parents.
Yeah, I know. I feel like Bill and Paulette would definitely be dining with you and bringing everyone boxes of fancy leftovers. But Maxine revealed that she ate restaurant meals about two hundred days per year, dinner and lunch, and almost always alone, because inspectors really can't risk being identified through conversations at the table.
I love eating out, and I love eating out at good restaurants, but two hundred days a year I have to, and especially like by yourself most of the time. That kind of seems like torture.
I know. It's almost like work travel, Like as a kid, you think it's going to be so exciting, like on the road in hotels and stuff, and then you do it for a few months and it kind of loses the charm. But at Michelin, the system is almost set up like this secret service. So Maxine said when she was being considered for the job, she had to eat several meals under supervision of inspectors who operated like spies.
And this is her quote. You never know the name of the person you're meeting, You never know where their meeting until right before, so they call you up and say meet me at the corner of XYZ and xyz.
So dramatic, like you kind of forget for a second we're talking about food, like it seems like a national security thing, but it's really like who has the best pork belly.
Yeah, And aspiring inspectors also have to attend a secret Michelin training course in France and then they have to complete all this additional still anonymous training in another country, and then they do a three to six month still very anonymous apprenticeship with a more senior inspector. So another anonymous inspector from a twenty seventeen Food and Wine article did shed a little bit of light on what happens here.
He said, we always order three courses, an appetizer and entree and dessert, and we try to pick items that are the best representation of the menu concept or chef's talents. But of course, despite Michelin's best efforts, in December two thousand and three, there was this big tell all.
I was hoping you would get to a tell all.
Yeah, you kind of have to hope for it. So this book comes out from this inspector in Pascal Remy, who was fired after revealing that he'd kept a diary of his career, and he planned to publish this book. And so the book is called The Inspector Sits Down at the Table, and it was published in France in April two thousand and four, and it caused a huge stir. One journalist from France called it a storm and a saucepan A storm.
I kind of love that.
Yeah, it's great, right, it's also a good description of Ruby. But Remy alleged some pretty wild stuff in this book, all of which Michelin disputes. He said that despite publishing new guides with updated ratings every year, Michelin didn't actually visit or revisit every restaurant annually, which is a huge
scandal right in part because there aren't enough inspectors. Remy wrote that there were only five inspectors in all of France as of two thousand and three when he was writing, which is not nearly enough to cover the country's ten thousand restaurants. He also said there's some three star restaurants which were secretly deemed untouchable, so like, under no circumstance
could they lose their talpeting. Even though Remi claimed more than a third of the guide's three star rated establishments didn't actually meet the three star criteria.
I feel like that's a really bad look for a rating system that's supposed to be, you know, super objective and impartial for this whole history of its existence. But when you have something like a Michelin star that sought after and means so much to these restaurants, there's definitely going to be some fallout from this.
So what are you thinking about right now?
Well, for example, obviously, getting a Michelin star can catapult a restaurant into fame in many cases bring these huge profits. But losing a star, and I had not really thought about this before, but it can bring just the opposite of that effect. So Thornton's at the Fitzwilliam Hotel, a high end Dublin restaurant, lost its Michelin star back in twenty fifteen, and it maintained this star for two decades, and when it did, profits dropped by seventy six percent
by the end of twenty sixteen. Yeah, and actually the place ended up having to close after that. And as the chef, Kevin Thornton told The Irish Independent, losing the star felt like quote getting stabbed in the heart. I mean, it means so much to these people. In fact, one chef, Bernard Lazeau, was so terrified of losing his three Micheline stars that it may have actually contributed to his two thousand and three suicide.
That's really terrible.
Yeah, it really is. I mean he'd been running this Burgundy restaurant called Lecouteur, where he had actually gotten a third Michelin Star in nineteen ninety one, but in two thousand and three, this French newspaper Le Figaro published this rumor and claimed that he was slated to lose his third star, and his widow told The Observer that the rumor had a real impact on her husband because he feared that losing a star would have these devastating financial consequences.
But one of the saddest parts of the story is after his death, the two thousand and three Michelin Guide gave the restaurant its usual three stars. That is so sad, it really is. But it's not just losing a star that can have negative consequences for a restaurant. Even getting a star can throw a place into turmoil. So it's
an example of that. After being listed in the twenty sixteen Hong Kong Guide, there was this dessert shop called Kai Kai Dessert that was forced to move because its landlord got greedy and thinking that it would bring this new spike in business, he raised the rent by one hundred and twenty percent, which is awful. Yeah, and the owners did get lucky though there was this loyal customer that offered them rent in a nearby space at a
rent that he could afford. But the Michelin Star branding can be especially tough on small establishments that don't have the capital or the capacity to meet this sudden demand that comes with a rating. Like seventy two year old Jafi, who earned a Michelin Star in twenty seventeen for her cooking at an open air street food restaurant in Bangkok.
So the award made her this overnight celebrity, which is great, but she was one of only seventeen chefs in Thailand with a star, and a few months later she actually told a reporter she wanted to give the star back.
Can you actually give a starback?
Not really? But if I explain that her restaurant's vibes had been super relaxed before and the star had basically turned it into chaos, I actually feel like I've experienced this before at restaurants when they seem so good and suddenly they gained this notoriety and that experience has just changed totally. So the award made her this overnight celebrity.
She was the only person cooking, so suddenly there was this increase in traffic, and it meant she no longer had time to take breaks or chat with her diners that were there, and her servers were overwhelmed from the stress and just worry that neighbors on their street were going to get angry because of the crowds and the noise.
But the worst part was that Jay Fi had all these tax inspectors that started showing up seemingly because they thought she must be making more money than she had reported, and they kept trying to look through her books.
So it is Jay the only chef who's tried to give these starsback.
Have you heard more? Not even close. So there's this South Korean chef oh Ya Kwan got an Italian eatery called Restaurante O, and it received a Michelin star in twenty seventeen. It was a guide to soul dining there and O claims that as soon as he learned this, he contacted Michelin and asked to be removed, but it unfortunately didn't work for him, and his restaurant appeared again in twenty eighteen with a star.
So, I mean, I guess there's another way, right, he could just try to lower the quality of the food theirs out, But I mean, I guess that's not anything any self respecting chef wants to do well.
In the twenty nineteen edition, oh actually did lose the star, but he still appeared in the guide, at which point he actually sued Michelin, not for the demotion, but for including his restaurant at all. There was this CNN interview that he did and he explained that the guide's methodology was part of the problem. It's the cruelest test in the world, he says. It forces the chefs to work around a year waiting for a test, and they don't
know when and it's coming. I mean, I do love that there's this rating system to help guide me as this outsider, especially in cities that I don't know.
But you can see how it's hard on chefs. And also there have been strange stories that make you question the objectivity and fairness of the organization, like apparently Michelin inspectors are supposed to visit a restaurant several times before they raid it, but in two thousand and five, for the first time in history, Michelin was actually forced to
recall one of its guides. The two thousand and five guide covering Belgium, the Netherlands in Luxembourg, was pulled after fifty thousand copies had already been published, and the reason was that this Belgian restaurant, the Austin Queen, had been given that bib Gorman designation, you know, the one for like great cheap food, but the restaurant hadn't actually opened yet loops. So you know, there's also this issue of
investors in the Michelin Guide. The whole thing is a really expensive enterprise, and so like you're talking about these big tabs from fine dining restaurants plus printing up the actual guide. So some Michelin guides are the result of investments from the countries themselves. Michelin guides to Thailand and Singapore and Hong Kong are actually backed in part by payments from the local tourism boards, which totally makes sense,
but the sums are pretty impressive. Like Thailand paid supposedly four point four million dollars to be paid out over the course of five years to fund like multiple editions of the Michelin Thailand Guide.
That is a lot of money.
Yeah, and corporate sponsors can get involved too, like to launch the Hong Kong Guide in two thousand and eight, Michelin got funding from several brands, including Evian Espresso, Robert Parker Wine Advocate, which Michelin owns a stake in, And while the details are kind of scarce, it kind of makes it hard to verify if government or corporate money is influencing Michelin Stars and if they are, what extent are they actually having their influence met?
I mean, I have to guess this is not zero.
Yeah, I mean the website Eater connected some of the dots for Michelin Singapore g and so there's this Resorts World Sentosa and they acted as a title sponsor the guide and hosted this invitation only gala for the launch of the twenty sixteen Singapore Stars Guide and after that for the resort's restaurants also happened to snag seven of those coveted Stars.
So, I mean, it could be a coincidence. Probably not.
There's also been an issue with Michelin and greenwashing. So in twenty twenty, Michelin added a new designation to the Stars and the bib Gourmond and they call it the Green Star. Supposedly it honors quote restaurants that are role models when it comes to sustainable astronomy.
So what exactly does that mean.
Yeah, I mean it sounds great, but it's pretty unclear what it actually indicates. So there's this chef Chris Polisi who wrote in this deleted blog now that the Green Star review process consisted of one brief call to his restaurant. There wasn't an in person audit or a detailed questionnaire, and as he put it, there wasn't even quote a critical question of any type. And then there's this other chef, Matt Orlando, who agreed, and he told Wired there was
absolutely no fact checking during his Green Star review. I could have said anything and it would have qualified me for the ward.
I'm just shocked by this.
So Michelin says, our teams rely both on their field work, i e. On the experience of eating in that restaurant, as well as in depth research and conversations with restaurant tours regarding their eco responsible practices. So that's their defense.
I actually didn't think we could get more vague than refined and inspired versus elevated to an art form, But here we are. Mago.
Yeah, it's a pattern, but the near total secrecy around this review process, especially the process by which stars are given and taken away means it's kind of impossible to know if Michelin is being fair or what other factors, whether that's money or connections or sponsorship, is actually playing a role. And for diners and chefs, you really don't know if the reviews are done by people familiar with local cuisines.
Right right, actually on that local cuisine tip. It's worth noting that even though in recent years Michelin has expanded coverage beyond Europe and European cooking, some have definitely criticized it for retaining an overly European lens that South Korea and chef oh Ya Kwan, the guy who wanted to give his starback you remember him, said that the entire Soul Guide was suspect and quote a sad joke since it only included one hundred and seventy of the city's restaurants.
So writing in Vogue Korea, one food writer explained, the only people who really care about having the Michelin Guide in Seoul are those who are obsessed with Soul's international status. Like they're obsessed with impressing Western elites. They aren't confident that Soul can stand on its own as a restaurant capital.
So is there Michelin on other continents?
Well? So far, Michelin's presence in South and Latin America is pretty new and rather limited. And it doesn't seem aware that Africa exists just yet. Somebody should tell them about Africa.
I also noticed that you didn't mention Antarctica.
It's a real snub, to be honest with you. But the research station near this one ice dome supposedly has just the most amazing papoosas.
So they're missing out. Well before we sign off, maybe.
We do a quick backup.
Absolutely, how about we start with the world's most remote Michelin star restaurant. This two star restaurant called Cox in Elimanok, a tiny settlement on Disco Bay in Greenland. The town has a population of fifty six, but the restaurant's staff has brought that up to eighty eight now and today. It's accessible by boat in the fall and summer, but in the winter and spring, when icebergs clogged the bay, you can only get there by helicopter.
Wow, And so what can you get there?
There's a tasting menu that includes more than twenty courses and it costs about four hundred and seventy dollars or thirty two hundred Danish kroner, which I.
Know you didn't have to do that conversion. Yeah, I knew.
The food is all locally sourced, and you get dishes like raw whale skin marinated in currant leaf oil, musk ox broth, reindeer tartar with moss and fermented mushroom comfort food, and tarmiguan with black currant salsa.
Okay, all right, well, speaking of one of Michelin's cheapest restaurants. Back in two thousand and nine, the dim sum restaurant Tim ho Wan opened in Hong Kong and set the world on fire, and within just a year it received a Michelin Star, becoming the world's most inexpensive Michelin starred restaurant.
But almost as quickly it expanded beyond its humble roots, and today Tim Howan is a multi national chain with locations in twelve countries, including two where you live in New York City, which is maybe the best way of dealing with the headache of getting a star anyway. Tim Howan Hong Kong no longer has a Michelin Star, but it does have the BIB gourmand as a nation.
Yeah, I was actually reading about another one of these cheap eats. The Michelin twenty sixteen guide for Singapore, which was their inaugural guide there, gave this star to a street food hawker for the first time. The person's name was Leo Fan and the restaurant is Hong Kong Seya Sauce Chicken, Rice and Noodle, and it also claimed to be the most inexpensive Michelin Star restaurant for a while. It's famous sey sauce chicken dish cost about two dollars.
But just like your chef, Tim Howan quickly used that star to open up a slew of franchises.
Yeah, not surprising. So I know we talked about all these chefs trying to give back their stars, but there are plenty who lose stars and desperately want them back, including the French chef Mark Verrat. So in twenty nineteen, Verat lost this lawsuit he brought against Michelin after the guide demoted his restaurant from three stars down to two.
And the thing is he wasn't actually asking for the star to be reinstated, but he was trying to get Michelin to provide the names and resumes of the inspectors who graded him, as well as proof that they had in fact eaten at his restaurant. And for their part, Michelin refused, saying they had to protect their inspector's and anonymity, but that the demotion was based on one detail. Verat used English Cheddar in his soioux flet, I mean just
a big mistake, choose mistake. So for his part, Verrot insisted that he had never done any such thing, and in fact, he showed the court a video of the soufflet's preparation. It used two French cheeses, Beaufort and Roblachan, and Verat told CNN, I'm ready to accept losing a star, but they have to tell me why. In my opinion, they are incompetent. Do you realize they mixed up Roblachan and Cheddar. I mean, my god, can you imagine this?
So the court ruled against Verat, saying there was no proof that he and his business had suffered any damage from the demotion, and to be fair, it does feel like if you've got the sophisticated palette of a Michelin chef, it is hard to mix up cheddar and robleish on which is this soft, squishy cheese that kind of looks like brie or Beaufort, which is basically a type of griere. And I feel like this is probably a conspiracy that we can investigate in a different episode cheese controversies.
Well, I really like that last fact, and I think I'm going to give you today's trophy.
Oh that's so kind of you. All right, I'm going to place this on Dylan's desk for all of those pills very dope boys to admire. That's it for today's Part Time Genius. If you like the show, make sure to tell every single person you know, seriously, every single person, but thank you for listening.
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Ni mongaish heatique and research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay trustee Dara Potts and Viny Shorey.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.