The secretive life of a Michelin inspector
vanityfair.com
vanityfair.com
As a French guy who lived in Japan for some time, I've got a very simple explanation for why Japan has more Michelin stars than France.
If you go to a normal average restaurant in France, the food will usually not be very good, they will serve dishes prepared with pre-made sauces from Metro, they won't serve anything amazing. There's a very big discrepancy in France between normal restaurants priced less than 20 euros per person for lunch without wine and the gourmet more expensive restaurants.
People also go out to restaurants a lot less than in Japan so there are less restaurants in France. In Japan, Osaka has 16,000 restaurants. Tokyo has 55,000 restaurants. Paris only has 14,000.
Even restaurants that are not very expensive (1000 yens lunches) in Japan tend to only use homemade ingredients. They don't use pre-made sauces. The average quality of normal restaurants is much higher and a lot of the Chefs at those restaurants are actually passionate about the food and try hard to improve their skills.
So, it's simple, Japan is a country with at least twice the number of restaurants per population as France and with a much higher percentage of passionate chefs that want to improve their skills and are there for the love of food rather than for earning money. It's actually surprising that Japan still has so little Michelin stars.
As for michelin stars, I actually trust the Gault et Millau guide a lot more in France, they don't care as much about the atmosphere and the service, they care about the food and ultimately that's the only that matters for me.
I'm sorry if this feels like the wrong tone, but how familiar are you with Japanese aesthetics and philosophy? I am only slightly familiar, but my understanding is that kaiseki ryori is not about "tasty" but a form of philosophical statement by the chef (for example, seasonal touches referring to the impermanence of life), and also a means of linking with nature. For example, the rough, asymmetrical, and "used-looking" look of the tableware, in contrast to say the impeccable and ornate perfection of the Chinese equivalent, references wabi-sabi and is meant to both complement the seasonal and natural feel of the ingredients, and make you think about the bittersweet nature of ephemeral life. There might even be cultural references. In many cases you're supposed to get out still feeling slightly hungry. Each dish evokes a different feeling and the succession of feelings and the way in which they are executed are what a meal like Kikunoi is about. (dear Japanese readers please correct me)
It's like "no" theatre (not kabuki!): a highly formalized, stylized art form where the audience is expected to be familiar with everything already and is appreciating only the "how" not the "what" of the play. A no performance uses archaic language modern Japanese audiences don't even understand, but all the attendees know the words already. It would feel tremendously boring to an outsider (guilty!), with not much visually happening, whilst your Japanese host gets excited about the masterly way in which bending the head a couple of degrees down has utterly changed the implied feeling of the actor.
When I first travelled to Japan, I was frustrated by the lack of intensity present in, well, everything, from architecture to food (except fast food) and even fashion. My relatively frequent trips to Japan improved a lot after I took the time to read books to try and understand the local mindset, at least of Kamakura to Edo period Japan (when the warriors took over from the overly sophisticated aristocracy that ran the country from Kyoto in the Heian period). It is this refinement within the constraints of simplicity (with the tea ceremony the most extreme example) that makes Japanese arts so sophisticated. We sort of have it in the West too; Mozart is not impressive aurally in the way that, say, Rachmaninov or Liszt might be, but playing Mozart well (or something like Liszt's Pilgrimage Years) requires a lifetime of study and is appreciated for its subtlety and control and life experience more than the sheer block of sound and expressed ideas in the content.
Reading Yelp reviews makes me cringe at all the people who demand attentive service from restaurant staff, and all the attention to venue and atmosphere. Personally, when I go to a restaurant, generally I go to find some tasty food, atmosphere is always besides the point. Obviously some people factor in obscure details of food venue experiences to their reviews and they care about those things. As in music, some people love obscure subgenres of repetitive techno or metal, or specific renditions of classical songs played at a certain venue during a specific point in time by a regional musician, played at a specific pacing.
Reviews are always someone else's opinion, which is great if the reviewer can articulate the goods and bads of their personal experience for others to relate to.
What Happens When Second Graders Are Treated to a Seven-Course, $220 Tasting Meal
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/magazine/fine-dining-for-s...
A guest in my house this week is a big fan of very simple techno. I'm obsessively listening to and playing through Franck's Prelude, Chorale and Fugue after hearing Stephen Hough play parts of it at a masterclass a month ago which gave me a new understanding of and hunger for the piece. I do so with headphones because I know the sound bothers my guest. What little techno I have heard from his computer bothers ME a little because of the absolute paucity of content (I say this as someone who brought a Daft Punk track to an analysis class as a joke which turned into a 1h30 discussion on the only three elements we were able to isolate).
My taste has evolved from over 25 years of investing in understanding (classical) music, probably well over the 10,000 hours mark. He hasn't invested the hours (decades) so he doesn't appreciate the art, much or at all. And that's fine - he appreciates other things in life, in which he has invested time, and in which I understand very little. The content of the Franck is complex and high dimensional (if that makes sense) and requires that previous body of knowledge and experience to appreciate; in fact, as someone who has never played on an organ, I am probably lacking a fair amount of experience to make the most of Franck.
With that body of knowledge, you are able to judge and appreciate the piece according to objective standards. Without, you get the second graders and the tasting meal (and they did like the wagyu!). Untrained listeners will react to some of the harmonies. Take the famous hand jump chords [1]. A "man in the street" might appreciate the familiar chord progression. A pianist will react immediately to the genius of that hand jump that forces you to isolate the "melody" (and perhaps shaping the arpeggiated chord that ends up "naturally" leading to it) due to the physics of getting to that last note. I took a friend to that masterclass and he was as bored as I was fascinated.
From A Mathematician's Apology: "Mr. J. M. Lomas put this point more picturesquely when we were passing the Nelson column in Trafalgar Square. If I had a statue on a column in London, would I prefer the column to be so high that the statue was invisible, or low enough for the features to be recognizable? I would choose the first alternative, Dr. Snow, presumably, the second." [2]
That being said I think there is value in "man on the street" reviews. As such a man in the case of many fields, I would like to know how others reacted as a proxy for my own reaction. There is a place for Yelp, and for Michelin. One is wealthier for reading both.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq67nsDLucI&t=5m32s [2] http://www.amazon.com/Mathematicians-Apology-Canto-Classics/...
I'm curious what "elements" means in the context.
What is more interesting, and hard to really discuss if you are not familiar with the genre (which I was not and still am not) is why the song writers would use them and what they reference explicitly and implicitly and so on. I would love for anyone to tell me more about the song and its context!
Actually, thinking about music, or anything, like this is terrible. I read a book on Japanese architecture whose author (an awarded architecture professor from the US) I have forgotten which was basically listing as context-less observations everything she saw. For example "and this is a join typical of the suki-ya house, it's made by hand out of this wood and with these tools. Then it goes here. The suki-ya house has a table here used for writing. The walls are made with plaster over a bamboo mesh." etc. I learnt very little, although I knew a lot of factoids afterwards. But there are writers (like Marc Peter Keane [1]) who are much better, because they introduce everything with their meaning and where they stand in the tradition and mindset and history of the culture that produced it.
[1] e.g. http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Garden-Design-Marc-Keane/dp/0... which is actually a nice very basic introduction to how Japanese history shaped its aesthetics.
Good example of the tonal and rhythmic focus in DP production style, "Rollin' & Scratching" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbb8kZw-xRg
There's certainly context for Daft Punk if you want to dive into their brains (record collectors, hip hop, electro, disco, funk, (French)-house, Detroit techno, German psychedelic 'Krautrock'), and much like the bulk of architects and musicians prior and since, DP's production style was/is largely the product of tools and techniques available to them.
http://ravearchive.com/mixtapes/Daft_Punk/Live_At_Further_19...
http://ravearchive.com/mixtapes/Daft_Punk/Live_In_Borealis_M...
Electronica and tonal focused dance music are more closely related to Indonesian Gamelan music than Western classical.
Auto-playing video warning! Also: be aware that the meat of the content is in the video.
Once you're accustomed to the food in Japan, the ingredients taste ... low grade even at most of the "nicer" restaurants in San Francisco (especially the meats or fish). Japanese say this secretly to each other, only Japanese can taste it, but actually anyone who lives in Tokyo long enough can taste it. song is very correct.
The quickest way to appreciate the food in Japan, try the $10 pasta at any place highly rated on Tabelog, and you will see that the quality difference is just as song describes. The difference extends far beyond the chefs, it's the farms, fisheries, logistics and overall high standards all working together.
[1] http://www.thekitchn.com/the-strangest-food-i-ever-ate-2-919...
I was wondering why my ex-wife's mom kept giggling during dinner.
(this is an 'editorialized' title)
Being an inspector isn't the easy job I thought it would be :)
I also find that if a place like Oaxaca has no Michelin stared restaurants, the Michelin guide is limited to a kind of food and not necessarily the best food the world has to offer. Though I am probably overly partial to mole in it's various forms...
There are many many great restaurants in the world that are not Michelin eligible, which is a real shame.
Critics also take a risk by staking out their opinion, which they know is fallible, subjective, and liable to attack. They take the risk because they value discussion and learning over the protection of their and the artist's egoes. It is a form of courage that should be praised, "man in the arena" notwithstanding.
Moreover, in many industries (if not all), if the critics stay silent, only the PR firms are sounding, which sucks for the consumer who becomes drowned in noise and unable to engage with the art.