Happy birthday Michelin star, happy 90!
The brothers André and Édouard Michelin established the biggest tyre manufacturer in the world.
Known everywhere as the company behind the “big boy with white rolls”, today Michelin is one of the world’s biggest brands. Naturally, achieving this success comes down to excellence in the company’s product range. However, there was another strategy: the Michelin Guide, with its food stars ranking system.
My 3-star Aqua by Sven Everfeld experience in Wolfsburg.
The Michelin founders were convinced that cars would make journeys shorter and a whole lot easier for all.As a way to promote this they created a book in 1900 to provide information about changing tyres, maps, places to eat & stay. Their belief was that by making road travel easier, automobiles would become more popular and, thus, more tyres would be used. The little red book quickly grew in size as more information was added, particularly when hotel and restaurant reviews were included. As motoring increased international expansion began with Belgium, followed by the UK just three years later. Although the Guide sold more copies with each passing year, it still lacked prestige.Recognising this, the star rating system was introduced, thereby shaping the Guide into the prestigious guide of restaurants it is known as today. The Guide has since spread to over 20 countries, stretching as far as Japan and Australia. Since all chefs know that you cannot buy a Michelin star, thats the point that makes the Michelin Guide so unique. Nowadays the Guide has some problems but it is still the achievement for any aspiring chef. It is the level of objectivity by Michelin’s highly secretive rating process, including anonymous inspectors, which has lifted them in the culinary world. Despite the level of respect that the Michelin Guide commands around the world, criticisms of its processes and ratings are plentiful. For a long time, the system was frequently panned for French restaurants and classic French cuisine – a criticism that still continues today. Japan overtook France as the country with the most Michelin-starred restaurants. As such, Tokyo has now become the gastronomic capital of the world, with 150 starred restaurants, Paris 78, New York’s 42 and Berlin 2o stars. The Michelin Guide is a great vehicle of promotion for the restaurant business and has even become a point of interest for those outside the culinary sphere.
In fact, today, food has become an cultural reference point. The ‘foodie’ revolution encompasses television shows, recipe books, countless blogs and magazines all devoted to the subject.
In conjunction with this rising popularity is the growing prominence of the Michelin Guide. Starred chefs become beloved celebrities, regularly appearing in the media, cultivating their own fan bases along with broadening the customer bases at their restaurants. “The foodie culture that is prevalent today is not necessarily new, but the scale – the number of people interested in food as a cultural experience – is probably unprecedented. Like many other cultural phenomena, there is no single cause, nor is there a clear, linear relationship between this mindset and any social, cultural or commercial factor. All the while, the Guide continues to boost the Michelin brand around the entire globe, with various countries and cities clamouring for inclusion, for wherever there are roads and restaurants, the Guide could very soon appear.
Annex: Our editorial team take part of the evolution – more and more people eat in hotels.
Stay tuned.
Restaurants Michelin in Germany (german language)
