I remember watching a video on how Michelin Stars started out as a travel guide brochure for the best restaurants in France as a sort of advertisement for Michelin branded tyres (look at all these restaurants you could go to with Michelin tyres!).
How did the Michelin stars become so sought after by top restaurants and chefs? Was the head of the Michelin tyre company also a renowned food connoisseur or something? What about other tyre companiee, why didn’t they do something similar? Are Michelin Stars still given by the tyre company, or has it been spun off into its own thing?
Why are Nobel prizes so highly revered when they originate from an explosives manufacturer?
Because everybody wants to invent dynamite
my cooking always get 3 Goodyear stars.
Well, at least the Pulitzer Prize makes sense, I guess.
TIL Michelin, Nobel and Guinness have the best marketing departments
Guinness They got Sir Alec to do lifetime marketing for them, hard to top that.
The Michelin Guide is still run by the tyre company, and for much the same reasons - advertising, and getting people to go through their tyres faster (one Star justifies a stop, two Stars justify a detour, three Stars justify a special trip?) Though inspectors do try to offer genuine reviews, because at this point people who value such things trust the Guide because the Guide’s usually pretty close to reality.
For the same reason that the World Record Holders are decided by a brewery. They just started doing it, and people wanted to be on their list.
That was almost certainly to help settle bar arguments before they became bar fights.
You’re half right! It was actually to prevent golf course fights.
The michelin thing was to get people to drive around more, driving up tourism and tyre use
To promote travel by car, Michellin started testing restaurants all over the country to give recommendations where automobilists could get a good meal on their tours.
Are there actually Michelin stars given to us restaurants (except for Burger King)?
I’ve eaten in US restaurants that rival restaurants in Paris.
I’d say the average restaurant in France is definitely better than the average in the US - but this is comparing apples and oranges.
New Yorkers would actually take offense at this question: they believe they have the best restaurants in the world (I don’t agree, but they have an argument given the great variety of immigrants that settled there since before the US existed).
I’d agree that NYC has probably the most diverse food scene in the world.
About 1500 of them apparently.
I stand accused.
It’s pretty global, anywhere with a good restaurant culture will probably have at least one or two. I believe Tokyo is the city with the most stars for example, I would have assumed it was Paris or somewhere else french before I found that out
It’s not global, Michelin stars aren’t a thing in Australia atleast. I imagine there’s a lot of places where people don’t get food recs from a tyre company.
Oh that’s interesting, you’ve got me curious. I looked into it and some other company has already established a similar system involving “chef hat” ratings apparently. I guess maybe they didn’t want to bother competing with it.
Apparently Michelin seems to focus on Europe, the Americas and South East Asia. Africa and the rest of Asia seem to be left out, though they seem to be expanding every year (the Philippines got their own guide this year for the first time apparently), so I guess it’s probably just a matter of time before other places are covered.
And tyres aren’t cheap, which was the whole point. The Michelin Stars program was to show you what was worth wearing out your tyres more for as opposed to local stuff.
I would always advocate for finding local businesses to support, but that wouldn’t help a tyre company sell more tyres, now would it?
As for why other tyre companies didn’t do it, they didn’t need to. You don’t need to buy Michelin tyres to visit restaurants awarded Michelin Stars. The restaurant doesn’t check. They don’t even care. It’s not about the tyre brand for them. Certainly people with other tyre brands will go to places with Michelin Stars… but if you can’t afford Michelin tyres, you probably can’t afford to eat at places with Michelin Stars, either.
Marketing
Something about they made a guide for customers to visit destinations and it evolved into the finer dining experiences over the years. Details are fuzzy but I don’t think it’s as eventful as anything involving the Dulles brothers
Michelin stars are highly valued because advertising, elitism and tradition are highly valued.
The Michelin Brothers thought it would be good advertising for their tire company, and it was, and it kind of became its own thing but stars are still owned and operated by Michelin the tire company.
Important to note that beyond it being owned by a tire company, they don’t even give stars to the best restaurants, only restaurants that fit certain prestige requirements as well as agree to pay Michelin to give them a star.
Other tire companies don’t pursue the same scam because Michelin is the front runner, and it obviously doesn’t tie in to car accessories very heavily, so there’s not much incentive for other tire companies to do the same thing, especially when it’s basically just a “pay me $400,000 for a fake gold star racket”.
I looked into this after watching the bear, when they were talking about Michelin stars, and then I found out the extent of Michelin star chicanery.
Just one factual point - restaurants don’t have to pay for a star. They don’t even have to apply to be considered (but it helps). The only costs are those incurred in running a fine dining restaurant.
Michelin stars are pay to play.
Inspectors will not visit cities unless the city registers with Michelin, which carries high, recurring fees.
That’s why many prominent cities like Boston, for example, have zero Michelin star restaurants, because they won’t pay the shakedowns(tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the city) that Michelin demands for their stars.
Wow. Had no idea that’s how it worked over there, fucking ridiculous. Glad that’s not how it works over here.
I get it, I was shocked when I looked it up. Extremely disappointing
They wouldn’t give a star to anyone in Manchester for years. It was a real point of contention. There are two now though.
they started the guide in 1900, added 1 star 20 years later, and 3 soon after, then focusing on high end. do you know what else started in the 1900-30 era? the nobel prize and the academy awards.
be early and don’t quit helps build reputation, other guides came and went
Because French.
Orson Welles: A-HAAAAAaaaa the-Fr3nchhhh
Does it matter where a good idea comes from?
My opinion as someone who was in the restaurant industry for about 20 years.
I think it basically came down to this. If you can convince people to go to a restaurant that needs a bit of a road trip, you will sell more tyres. And if you did need new tyres, the guide conveniently pointed you to garages that, surprise, sold Michelin.
Tourism was growing quickly at the time, so the guide focused on the popular destinations of the era. France of course but also places like Switzerland and Spain. Being based in France and tied to the car industry, Michelin rode the growth of both car travel and French dining culture.
French cuisine was already becoming dominant by the early twentieth century, and after the war you had top French chefs getting hired by major restaurants in places like New York. Le Cordon Bleu started around the same time in the late nineteenth century and benefitted from the rise of French fine dining, though it was not created by Michelin, I think they both rode the same wave.
By the nineteen twenties the restaurant section of the guide was already important, and in the nineteen thirties they introduced the three-star system. Once there was a clear hierarchy, chefs began competing for stars, and the Michelin rating became the recognised standard for fine dining. So having a star meant you would get free global reach can charge a premium and knew people would actively seek you out, I guess you just had to make sure you had parking.
Tasting History with Max Miller has a video on exactly this topic! Highly recommend it.
