What is a Michelin star? How to get a Michelin star? Michelin Star Restaurants in Moscow

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Restaurant Michelin star in its original version resembles rather than a star, but a flower or a snowflake. It was proposed more than a hundred years ago, in 1900, by the founder of the Michelin company, which initially had little to do with haute cuisine. The company at the end of the nineteenth century supplied tires for bicycles, and later for cars. Today it is an enterprise with 69 factories and a staff of 130,000 that manufactures tires for the above vehicles, as well as for motorcycles and aircraft.

Company made tires first

The second activity of the company is the release of ViaMichelin guidebooks and reference books, among which the most famous and in demand is the Red Guide - a restaurant rating. Its first editions contained the information travelers needed when visiting France, including the addresses of hotels, eateries, car parks and restaurants, the most expensive of which were marked with the sign from which it "grew"Michelin star.

The composition of the ranking has not changed for decades

The Michelin rating is a fairly conservative methodology, as changes in it are extremely rare. For example, the first adjustment took place more than a quarter of a century after its inception - in 1926, a single Michelin star in the guide began to mean not the most expensive establishment, but a restaurant with high-quality cuisine. A little later, two more positions with two and three stars appeared in the rating. And more, since the beginning of the 30s of the last century, the rating system has not changed.

Today, Michelin-starred restaurants can be divided into three categories - one, two or three stars, where one means that the cuisine in this institution is one of the best of its type. Two stars - the cuisine is excellent, it is worth coming here, even if you change your tourist route, and three stars - for the sake of such an institution it is worth making a separate trip. However, modern experts argue that this system is somewhat outdated, as it worked at a time when the restaurant business was more tied to roads and traveling on them.

There are more than just stars in the reference book

The Michelin star is not the only symbol found in the gourmet guide. Here you can also find signs in the form of crossed forks and spoons, which evaluate not the cuisine, but the level of comfort of the establishment. Two such signs mean that the restaurant is comfortable, and five (the maximum number) means that it is luxurious. In addition, the guide presents establishments without stars at all, but which have an assessment of the quality of the cuisine in the form of a pictogram of Bib's head - the symbol of Bibendum's Michelin company. Such a sign indicates good quality food at a reasonable price (about 35 euros). Also in the directory there are restaurants without stars, but marked with a sign of two coins, which means the opportunity to eat for less than 20 euros.

Inspectors visit establishments secretly

How to get a Michelin star, probably many people would like to know. But the assessment methodology is a trade secret of the firm. It is only known that the Michelin Guide team employs 90 inspectors (70 in Europe and 20 in Asia and America), who are recruited through a competition that includes a dinner with the chief inspector, after which applicants must write a report. Before that, the contestants must work for more than one year in the service sector and be familiar with all processes in this direction. After the entrance exams, the selected specialists take a six-month course, where they learn how to assign ratings to restaurants. All data is kept in deep secrecy and for disclosing them, Inspector Remy Pascal (Author of the book "The Inspector Sits at the Table", 2003) was instantly fired, and the book itself did not receive wide recognition abroad (it was not translated, for example, into Russian language).

Losing a star means a lot

But the details of the process, in general, have become public after all. Michelin inspectors have been known to travel the world, visiting up to a thousandrestaurants per year on anonymous grounds (!), where they make a conclusion about the quality of the cuisine and other restaurant data (atmosphere, service, prices, etc.). Based on the impressions received, they write reports that are considered at the head office in Paris at a collective meeting. Stars are assigned here and the condition of restaurants that received stars earlier is assessed. If the institution has changed for the worse, then the badge of honor can be taken away. And this always entails some outflow of customers and loss of reputation. So, French chef B. Loiseau committed suicide only because of rumors about a possible reduction in the stars of his establishment from three to two (which did not happen).

Restaurant must have original cuisine

Michelin stars in Russia or another country can only be obtained by establishments with author's cuisine. Therefore, restaurants need chefs with their own original dishes, which will contribute to obtaining a rating determined specifically for the institution. If the head chef, who is the author, leaves his job, then both he personally and his employer lose stars. The rating is known for its conservatism, so you can rarely find new conceptual establishments here, but there are only good restaurants with really tasty food, perhaps a little prim and designed for we althy people. The peculiarity of the guide is that the restaurants included in it do not have the right to indicate somewhere the number of stars they received, so that the client learns this information only fromthe rating itself. Otherwise, the institution may be deprived of its star "awards".

French appraisers prefer French

Despite the fact that the company tries to refute its commitment to French cuisine, there is a fact that there are more three-star restaurants in Paris than in twelve other European countries. In addition, it is in France that the most restaurants of all stellar magnitudes are more than six hundred. Many three-star institutions are found in the city, located thousands of kilometers from France - Tokyo. There are nine establishments with three stars, about twenty-five - with two and more than a hundred with a rating of one star. Michelin stars in Moscow are not officially assigned to any institution. The French inspectors turned out to be more favorable to establishments in the Czech Republic - "Allegro Prague" in Prague, and to Ukraine, where local businessmen opened a restaurant of Prague cuisine "La Veranda". In addition, it is worth noting the institution under the brand name "Greene", opened in Geneva by A. Comm.

There are no Michelin restaurants in Moscow, but there are chefs

What can Moscow restaurants offer connoisseurs of gourmet dishes? Michelin stars actually work with a lot of foreign specialists who came from foreign establishments marked with these eminent symbols. Among them is Cipollino, where Andrian Kellas works, who has gone through many establishments of high food culture around the world, including through the one-star Bacchus restaurant in Mallorca.

Chefs with Michelin stars work even in the suburbs. For example, Yan Lezhar, who oversees the River Palace fish restaurant, also “looks after” the kitchen at the Cheval Blanc establishment, located eight kilometers from Rublevo-Uspenskoye Highway on its own 50-hectare pristine forest plot. Foreign craftsmen can be found near the Garden Ring (L'Alberto), where N. Canutti, the former chef of the three-star London establishment Alan Dukas in Dorchester, works. Among the famous chefs there are also Slavic surnames, for example, Taras Zhemelko, who for ten years of work in this area managed to learn from Richard Corrigan, to be an assistant chef in the legendary Japanese Nobu, where he became a sous-chef. Today Taras works in an institution called Kai.

If you do not have the opportunity to visit Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris, then you can find samples of a variety of haute cuisine in Moscow. In Spelacotto you can get acquainted with the work of chef Scott Denning, who previously worked in London (La Gavroche, two Michelin stars). A master from Japan, Kobayashi Katsuhiko, who has been specializing in Japanese desserts for over 20 years, works in Nedalniy Vostok. In "Jeroboam", where Hanz Winkler (three Michelin stars) "conjures", you can feel the atmosphere of the Russian Empire and try "pigeons in a crisp" or "raka in saffron".

Some places in Paris require reservations a year in advance

Fans of eating abroad should take into account that some famous Western restaurants have a year-long queue for a table, they can be closed during school holidays, sometimes in August, as well as on Mondays and Sundays. In particular, the three-star L’Ambrosi establishment, located in Paris in a 17th-century house, has such a regime, which serves excellent pates and seafood in an exquisite design. Politicians, owners of large enterprises gather here, so the bill is from 250 euros and more. One of the oldest French restaurants, founded in 1784 (“Grand Vefour”), also has three stars. The institution is located in the gardens of the Palais Royal and has in its interior only authentic antiques from the Empire, many of which are so valuable that they are in special showcases. The account in the institution starts from 160 euros according to the “a la carte” system.