The story behind Michelin stars | Hacker News Reader

The story behind Michelin stars

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54 pointsMiriamWeiner41 comments

FWIW, the Gault Millau is imho vastly preferable to the Guide Michelin. Cares more about food quality than decor, and is actually reliable on its lower spectrum (< 1 star Guide Michelin recommendations are worthless, and 1 star is already very expensive; if Gault Millau recommends something, then it is always good; and the ratings and descriptions are relatively meaningful).

In The Netherlands a restaurant owner want's to get rid of it's three stars because he feel it lays too much preasure on him.

Unfortunately Michelin doesn't want to drop them.

Why pressure? Just keep cooking. He can put up a sign saying: "Don't expect Michelin stars adherence. I cook what I want to cook"

A maverick! That will only get in even more people!

Then the Michelin guy comes around again and decides for the first time in history to give a restaurant four stars.

It's pretty tough to get that third star; by simply changing the decor, laying off some staff, or closing the cloakroom the third star would go.

But this does remind me of a restaurant in Palo Alto (chef trained in a 3-star restaurant in Burgundy) whose owner asks people to leave bad yelp reviews. Basically the customer base is almost entirely regulars and that's enough to make it a good business. They don't want so much business that the regulars couldn't get a table.

there are easier ways to solve this problem. if you don't care who goes, you can just raise the price. if you just want to serve regulars, make it invite only.

I haven't eaten at the original location but that's apparently that's what Rao's is more or less like.

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2016/10/raos-new-york-exc...

Well, at this point, I'm really curious to know what the restaurant is!

I promise I will keep the secret, and if needed, happy to leave a bad Yelp review :)

It's Bistro Elan which moved to Birch St. No big secret, but they have only a few tables.

Seems improbable to me. They have a very nice web site which includes their (very favorable) Zagat and Michelin reviews. Why would they do that if they don't want to drum up more business?

More likely this is an urban myth. Or a shrewd marketing ploy.

I can see the owner trying to discourage those who use Yelp to find places to eat - it's probably a different kind of patron than those who are aware of the restaurant and looking for information on it.

To that end, it's 3.5 stars on Yelp (137 reviews), but Google reviews shows it as 4.5 (52 reviews). That difference alone seems that Yelp could be specifically targeted.

Yelp is probably just holding his positive reviews hostage until he pays up.

Is this a joke? Or is there something I missed?

Yelp has that reputation though I believe it to be false. Certainly they have put their finger on the pan for paid customers, but they have to be careful about it.

IN BE's case (and that of several other restauranteurs I've spoken with) she is unhappy with the general behavior of "yelpers" (obviously the nice ones she'd never notice :-))...I won't go into that. If the restaurant is always full you don't need new customers. This restaurant doesn't have the room for it, but I've seen yelper gatherings at larger restaurants and asked the waitstaff and they never seem happy with it.

I've used Yelp successfully when passing through an unfamiliar place (on the west coast of the US...less success elsewhere). It's a shame because the idea of Yelp/Tripadvisor/etc seems like it ought to be a useful one, but human nature seems to $^* it up.

Anecdotally, I find the Google ratings are always higher than Yelp for the majority of businesses I check.

http://www.paulgraham.com/saveelan.html

hah

Why do all that? Just make diners affirm that they are not a secret Michelin diner as a requirement for service.

I used to think restaurant guides were invented in America, with the publishing by a salesman named Duncan Hines of his favorite stops across the country. But his guide started with a Christmas card list in 1935, while the Michelin guide goes back to 1900!

Had a ~20 minute conversation about this yesterday.

I find it fascinating to ask what makes food taste good. We agreed it was a combination of texture, flavor(pairings, aromas, and basic taste like salt, sweet, acid, etc..), atmosphere/presentation.

What the conversation boiled down-to- are foods that use 'all the cheat codes', ie, adding sugar, salts, fats, acid; going to taste better than foods that are traditional?

I contest that American-Italian will taste better than Italian because it wins the Pepsi Taste Challenge. Where tradition doesnt allow you to use sugar in traditional Italian culture, American food has no rules.

From a biological point of view, the food with a sugar in it will win a comparison.

The goal I was looking to understand- If I can make American Thai Food that causes friends to eat until they have a stomach ache, does that beat traditional thai food that tastes good, but not addicting?

Of course, "traditional" Italian cuisine gets much of its sweetness from tomatoes introduced from the Americas.

Right! I often marvel at what Old-world cuisine was like before American influences. No tomatoes. No potatoes. No chocolate OR vanilla. Heck, no tobacco or coffee! What did they do after dinner?

Drink tea (from the Orient, of course...)

;)

Latin American influences.

Coffee is from the old world. It's native to Ethiopia.

Wow! That's news to me, thanks. I wonder if Ethiopia still has any old lineages of coffee growing...

Ethiopian Yirgacheffe is a pretty famous coffee. http://www.blackpowderroasting.com/all-about-ethiopian-yirga...

If you're looking for a wormhole to fall into this afternoon, here you go:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange

Don't forget to add corn, bell/chili peppers, pineapples and a bunch of nuts to your list of things that were introduced to the Old World.

It works both ways too. Horses, chickens and pigs aren't native to the Americas... and a whole range of diseases...

Traditional Italian also gets a lot of its umami from tomatoes and grated Parmesan or Grana Padano cheeses.

I was surprised to learn chilli flakes are a popular spice in Italian cooking from Italy (even Italian grandmothers use them).

They are almost never found in Italian-American cooking except in certain dishes like Arrabiata. Most of my Italian-American friends can't handle any amount of spice.

Italian sausage, eggs in hell, meatballs, spicy pepperoni dishes & spicy vodka sauces are Italian American cooking.

I’m not sure that I’ve been to an Italian American restaurant, including chains, in the last 30 years that didn’t have spicy food on the menu.

Good point. What about in pasta? If you're in Florence, most pastas are sprinkled with chilli flakes.

Not pasta, but red chili flakes are a ubiquitous condiment in US pizzerias.

I dunno. I had Panang curry in Thailand and it tasted exactly the same.

Thai food has all kinds of influences and changes as much as American food.

I was in Bangkok last year and Thai food there was amazing. Unlike American Thai food, it was savory rather than sweet, and had a kind of oomph that I've not experienced anywhere in the U.S. outside of San Francisco (Thai food in SF is pretty good).

American Thai food is trending sweeter by the year and getting less and less edible [1] for people without a sweet tooth like me.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/six-rul...

A huge factor is what your used to. If you regularly consume sweet things you get used to that flavor and stuff tastes bland without it.

On the other hand, if you eat a rather bland diet you start noticing many starches taste sweet as your saliva breaks them down.

No offense but if you can say that ‘American Italian vs Italian’ comment with a straight face you need to travel more. Food is a lot more complex than how you’re describing it. Yes, you can have good Italian food anywhere in the world (my favorite is Lenzi, which is in Bangkok) but there’s no comparison to eating good Italian food in, say, Florence. I’m typing this looking at the river Arno. Eating Italian food here is transcendent.

> What the conversation boiled down-to- are foods that use 'all the cheat codes', ie, adding sugar, salts, fats, acid; going to taste better than foods that are traditional?

This is one of those unquantifiable sentiments that will just devolve into one person's personal biases against another's. What counts as a "cheat code"? What is the definition of "traditional"? In fact, the rest of your post belies a bias against American food and American interpretations of non-American food.

In fact, three of your "cheat codes" (salt, fat, and acid) are fundamental elements of cooking world-wide. The differences are in how those elements are brought, figuratively and literally, to the table by various cultures.

You should try some traditional, West coast, native American food. I'm talking some salmon-with-nothing-on-it, maybe some of that black moss (edit: wila) soup, some bitterroot. Try and find the salt, fat, and acid.

Salmon is quite fatty, no?

>I contest that American-Italian will taste better than Italian because it wins the Pepsi Taste Challenge. Where tradition doesnt allow you to use sugar in traditional Italian culture, American food has no rules.

Yeah, thanks god the Michelin guide is European...

I've learned that the Michelin Guide tends to be a bit Euro-centric and the top percentile of its ranked restaurants tends to incorporate elements of molecular gastronomy (the new hotness these days), which isn't everyone's cup of tea.

I ate a Michelin restaurant in San Sebastian (Basque Country) a few weeks ago. New Basque Cuisine is heavily reliant on fresh ingredients, which is its hallmark, but this restaurant also tried to present its dishes using molecular gastronomy inspired techniques (i.e. foam of sea water, etc.).

It was such a heavily cerebral experience (trying to figure out what I was supposed to be tasting etc.) that I had no more energy to simply enjoy the food on an emotional level. In that sense, I think Michelin restaurants miss the mark.

I learned that I'm more interested in food that people miss when they move away. I'm thinking of Brazilian stews like moqueca de peixe (fish stew), bobo de camarao (shrimp stew) or even feijoada (pork and beans with rice). These are simple every day foods that are enjoyable on a visceral level, and that one thinks about wistfully when one is abroad. I don't think I could ever miss food from a Michelin restaurant.

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