The Michelin star - it’s been described as the Oscars of the restaurant industry.
A single Michelin star can take a restaurant from a riverside favorite to a must visit,
but getting one takes a lot of work.
It's good, this is really good, chef!
Do you feel like maybe you’re married to your job?
I am married to my job, yeah. I don't even have to have a flat anymore.
This Michelin Guide has been heralded as a benchmark for excellence for more than 100 years.
The guide employs inspectors to review more than 40,000 hotels and restaurants around the world.
According to the guide, one Michelin star marks a very good restaurant in its category.
Two stars indicate the restaurant is “worth a detour,”
while three stars, the crème de la crème,
denotes a restaurant with “exceptional cooking” worthy of a special trip.
These stars are so desirable some chefs work more than 70 hours in a week chasing them.
So what does it take to get a Michelin star?
The Michelin guide was started in France in 1889 by these two brothers: Edouard and Andre Michelin.
They owned a tire company, Michelin and Co, and believed if they produced
a guide highlighting a list of places to eat and rest, drivers would spend more time on the road.
That in turn would wear out their tires, pushing up the company’s sales.
The little-known guidebook soon expanded throughout Europe and eventually the world,
growing into the fine dining authority it has become today.
More than 30 million guides have been sold worldwide.
As of 2018, Tokyo held the title for the city
with the highest number of restaurants awarded with Michelin stars.
The city boasts 234 Michelin-starred restaurants,
followed by Paris with 121 and then Milan with 107.
So what goes into getting the guide’s coveted star?
I’m visiting Pied a Terre to find out.
The restaurant received its first Michelin star in 1993, and its second in 1996.
It currently holds one star.
So it’s 7:15 am. It’s really dark and I’m really tired.
But this is the time chefs at the Pied a Terre restaurant come in five days a week to work
and they don’t leave until 11:30 pm. Let’s go find out how they cope with this.
So chef, what are you doing right now?
The day you learn you’ve got your first Michelin star is a very proud moment for your career.
Oh my goodness, you don't leave till midnight? Or 1am?
Yeah sometimes, Saturdays, yeah, Fridays.
When do you sleep?
A couple of hours are enough.
All those hours, you're working for so many years, they're actually paying off.
Sometimes you feel like you’re working one, two, three, four, five years
and then you're working every day for 16 hours a day and you say, where is that going to take me?
The enviable job of dishing out stars and rating food establishments
falls on the shoulders of Michelin’s full-time inspectors.
To date, its inspectors have reviewed more than 30,000 hotels and restaurants across more than 24 countries.
To get a Michelin Star, you need to be consistent.
Chefs have to produce food at a high standard every time because it’s impossible to know when
Michelin star inspectors, who are always anonymous, will come by the restaurant.
Would you say you are a perfectionist?
Yeah, I tend to lose my temper if things are not the same way I want them to be.
Everything has to be at the right place every single time just because I want to become
better and better and better at keeping things consistent.
Achieving a star also requires a mastery of flavor and cooking techniques.
The restaurant must use quality ingredients and provide value for money.
All of it cost you £1?
No, no, each.
Yeah, a box cost me £70, so at the end of the day I've got to raise the prices to make sure we make a profit.
Michelin stars are valued, not only for the prestige,
but also because they can contribute to the financial success of a restaurant.
Restaurants generally put up their prices after securing a new star.
Pied a Terre saw a 25% increase in revenue after gaining its first star and a 40% increase after its second.
But there’s one aspect about running a restaurant that's rarely talked about,
how do chefs deal with the pressure of maintaining that Michelin Star?
Head chefs like Asimakis are working 70-hour work weeks.
That’s 46% higher than the 48-hour a week limit in most countries.
In 2017, a trade union survey found that 27% of chefs in London admitted to resorting to alcohol to cope
with their shifts and 51% admitted to suffering from depression because of the long hours.
Honestly, if you want to make money, do not go into the restaurant business.
You’ve got to invent an app or something.
That’s Skye Gyngell, currently the head chef at Spring Restaurant.
About a decade ago, she was the head chef at a humble restaurant,
Petersham Nurseries Café, where she hosted the likes of Madonna and Mick Jagger.
She was really enjoying her job, but then everything changed after she was awarded a star.
The pressure for me personally changed.
People would come and say, “You call yourself a Michelin star restaurant.”
That became quite hard because you had to think, “Is this going to be okay?"
Are the people who come, because they know we have a Michelin star, "Are they going to be happy?”
She’s not alone. Many chefs have tried returning their stars
because of the pressure of having to maintain them and customer's heightened expectations.
In 2003, renowned French chef Bernard Loiseau committed suicide
amid rumors he would lose his third star.
The Michelin Guide has maintained that it awards restaurants, not chefs, with stars.
We reached out to Michelin for comment, but did not hear back before publication.
Even amidst this controversy, Michelin stars are still coveted around the world.
Enjoy it and if a Michelin star comes, that’s amazing.
The ultimate goal is getting a second Michelin star at some point.
And then a third hopefully?
No, I’ll never even think of my life having a third Michelin star.
I’m still very, very young and have so many things to learn. We'll see how that takes me down the line.
Thank you so much for watching my video.
Let me know your thoughts, even if you just liked the way the food looked!
Comment below and don't forget to subscribe.