Michelin Star Restaurants

To be awarded a Michelin Star is probably one of the highest honors a restaurant can receive. A dining establishment can be awarded 1, 2 or 3 Michelin Stars. The rule of thumb or meaning behind each star is as follows:

1 Michelin Star – A very good restaurant in it’s category

2 Michelin Stars – Excellent cooking, worth making a special trip to visit

3 Michelin Stars – Exceptional cooking, worth making a special journey specifically to visit this restaurant (i.e. Vancouver to San Sebastian, Spain )

Of course, describing a restaurant as ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’ does not do it justice as there are so few restaurants that are ever awarded a star, and this honor is only given to the elite dining establishments in the world. Typically, the criteria for awarding a star is determined by several factors including quality of the food, technique and skill used, consistency, originality and overall experience.

The Michelin Guide is a publication published by the French company, Michelin, and they have been around for over 100 years. They are the ones who determine which restaurants are awarded a star.  On a similar note, the Michelin company also determines whether a restaurant who has already earned a star or stars, can get a star taken away.   They employ a full time staff of anonymous restaurant reviewers who are known for their passion for food, their exceptional tasting palate, high attention to detail, their ability to articulate and describe food to an audience, and excellent memory and recall of their food experience. BTW, this would be my dream job!

These stars can be instrumental in determining the success and profitability of a restaurant.  For example, if you are a relatively unknown restaurant and then you are awarded a star one day, then the next day you can expect to see hundreds of people lining up outside your restaurant, food bloggers writing about the restaurant, and the press and media surrounding you.  Michelin starred chefs are like the rock star of the food world.

Japan leads the pack with the most 3 Michelin Star restaurants in the world.  France comes in second, followed by Germany .  To my knowledge, there are no Michelin Star restaurants in Canada but there are some in the United States with several restaurants concentrated in New York .

I’ve been fascinated by the whole concept of Michelin Stars and the restaurants that have been awarded them after watching a documentary on Netflix about this the other day.  Michelin starred chefs were interviewed in this documentary and it’s interesting to note that as much as one strives to earn a star, I didn’t think of the opposite side of this until now.  There is such a huge fear of getting a star taken away if you have already earned a star(s) so you constantly feel the pressure to produce at the top level that earned you a star.  It has been known that chefs will cry themselves to sleep if a star is taken away.

I also learned that there is a large team of staff working behind the scenes in the kitchen and they produce all these exceptional dishes with hard work and extreme dedication but they often work for free so they can learn from a Michelin starred chef. The dishes that come out of these restaurants are so creative, and each plate is given so much attention to it and the amount of detail is incredible. It is like each plate is a canvas and the food is the artwork and there is so much time spent on each plate.   Some of these exceptional restaurants may serve only a handful of customers each night, and reservations may need to be made several months, or even up to a year in advance.  This is not just a meal, it can also be a once in a lifetime experience.  A typical tasting menu may cost around $300 a person, but these restaurants really depend on the wine sales to make a profit.

On my bucket list of restaurants I would like to visit in my lifetime are:

1) Arzak and 2) Akelare, San Sebastian, Spain - San Sebastian is known to be one the top culinary destinations in the world with 3 of 5, 3 Michelin star restaurants in this location. These chef have the ability to think outside the box and bring the idea of what food is and can be to the next level.

3) Le Bernadin, New York– Chef Eric Ripert (not only is he handsome with his salt and pepper hair, but I’ve seen him on television with Anthony Bourdain and he is so charismatic, talented and passionate about what he does)

4) French Laundry, San Francisco and 5) Per Se, New York – Chef Thomas Keller (I do own his French Laundry cookbook and his recipes are extremely detailed and look very complicated and time consuming but you can tell the outcome will be outstanding)

I have only been to a Michelin Star restaurant once in my life and that was when I as in Seville , Spain.  It was at a restaurant called Abantal, Seville’s longest running Michelin starred restaurant, which serves spectacular Andalucian cuisine. I was blown away at the creativity and attention to detail given to every dish that I received and the taste of the food was phenomenal. Some dishes were so original that it confused and fascinated me at the same time.  To see a sharp contrast of how I thought something should be prepared and what it should taste like versus their interpretation of the dish in the complete opposite form was so interesting.

For example, I was given a cookie as part of my starter dish, thinking it was going to taste like a traditional cookie.  However, this was a chorizo cookie which had the same appearance of regular cookie, but the savory taste totally made me rethink what a cookie could be.

Here are just a few of my pictures from Abantal but pictures don't really do it justice:

Unfortunately, combining a full day of site seeing, a bottle of wine and the typical late night dinner you often see in Europe equates to extreme exhaustion by the end of a long meal.  The takeaway from this experience going forward is that on the day I have a dinner reservation at a Michelin Star restaurant, I will take it easy and perhaps even take an afternoon nap so I can enjoy my dining experience to the fullest and be wide awake at the same time!