"Pressure comes from the chefs"

[fresh_a]

Derek Speaks Out:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WARNING - THIS LINK IS IN FRENCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!NON-FRENCH SPEAKERS BE ADVISED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edited June 23, 2003 by fresh_a (log)

[inventolux]

It was in french. I dont speak french.

[vengroff]

For those of you who do not speak French, here is google's English translation of the page.

Google Translation of the link above.

Note that the first obvious issue is that google translates "chef" to "head."

[fresh_a]

Maybe it's time to learn, if only for the pleasure of reading my links!

[Jonathan Day]

A loose (but I think accurate) translation follows:

+++

"The pressure comes from the chefs themselves", according to the head of the Michelin Guides

The Michelin Guide doesn't put pressure on chefs; "it comes from the chefs themselves", who seek after a system of grading. So inisted Derek Brown, the head of the most highly respected gastronomic guide in France, during an interview with AFP.

Derek Brown waited four months after the suicide of Bernard Loiseau and the debate around food criticism that followed it to speak out, noting that "it isn't right to react too quickly during a period of high emotional intensity".

"It's very tough being a chef," said Brown; "what with high value-added taxes, tough competitive conditions, and diminished tourism. It's also hard to get hold of qualified people and good products."

"When someone as gifted as Bernard Loiseau ends his days, for whatever reason, it hits hard, right at the heart of the system," he added.

"But a chef said this to me: if the Michelin Guide didn't exist, we would have to invent it. The pressure comes from the chefs themselves. We don't put pressure on anyone; we don't provide them with criteria to say what is good cookery or good hotel management," explained Mr Brown.

To those who have, for many years running, complained about the lack of transparency around Michelin's system for ranking establishments, Brown replied that it was "out of the question to provide a set of evaluation criteria, because the chefs would find that they were instantly trapped within those criteria. It's up to them to cook, it's up to us to judge one chef against the others."

"Nobody is required to appear in the guide. Nobody is obliged to have one, two or three stars," he added.

103 years after its founding, the Michelin Guide remains the number 1 gastronomic guide in France, with 550,000 copies of the guide to France sold on average: 400,000 in France, 150,000 abroad. The impact on a restaurant's revenue of the gain or loss of one star is roughly 25%.

A more demanding clientele

"We don't often downgrade an establishment. But when it happens, it's because there has been a change in the quality of service. We are well aware of our obligations. Nothing is done capriciously. Our decisions are based on objective facts and honest assessments. And this has always been the case: I don't really see why this debate has arisen today. I nonetheless accept that everyone doesn't agree with our choices," he adds.

To those who still carp at a British head of a French gastronomic guide, Brown said: "Most of our inspection teams have been in place for a decade. When we say that such-and-such a place no longer merits three stars, it's the same inspectors who awarded it three stars some years ago."

Asked about the growing levels of debt that chefs are taking on in order to gain or hold onto their stars, Brown retorted that "often, these investments are made after the stars have been awareded. The chefs tell me that it is their customers who are more and more demanding, especially about service."

"The three stars mean that the quality of the restaurant's setting matches that of their innovative cuisine," he said, adding that, "Michelin has never asked a restaurant to change the curtains."

Michelin inspectors visit an establishment several times, Brown emphasised, "because we want our evaluations to hold up over time. The guide only appears once a year."

Brown concludes: "The customers' demands and competitive pressures force those who break away from the pack to truly be better than the others. That's all it is. Our role is to give reliable information to those who don't have it: our readers."

[Pan]

"The three stars mean that the quality of the restaurant's setting matches that of their innovative cuisine," he said

This looks like the bias toward innovation and away from classic cuisine that others have detected in Michelin.

[Jonathan Day]

What I took away from the story was a bias toward service quality and setting (prestations, mise en scène).

I was also struck that a change in star status could push a restaurant's revenues up or down by 25%; presumably this happens both because demand and utilisation change and because the restaurant that gains a star is able to increase prices without reducing demand. Other things equal, this is a staggering change in a restaurant's gross margin, enough to make the difference between a healthy profit and a serious loss. It wasn't clear from the piece where this figure came from, or how well it had been tested.

[fresh_a]

I've spoken to many one and two-star restaurateurs here in Paris who don't want to change upwards, because being thus promoted, they would be obliged to continue spending more money on decoration, etc, and perhaps couldn't continue with the growing expenses. Many one and two stars are happy keeping their status quo

[Bux]

I've spoken to many one and two-star restaurateurs here in Paris who don't want to change upwards, because being thus promoted, they would be obliged to continue spending more money on decoration, etc, and perhaps couldn't continue with the growing expenses. Many one and two stars are happy keeping their status quo

It's always hard to determine exactly how truthful people are being when they say things like that. I certainly believe there is some truth to it, but having received another star, I don't know why one would feel obliged to do any more. The star is presumably awarded for what you have accomplished and not for what Michelin thinks you have promised to do in the future. On the other had, I do believe there are increased pressures to perform at each incremental rise. If you're fully booked and currently making a decent profit, the additional star will just keep you busy answering the phone with reservation requests you can't honor. The new business will crowd out your old customers and it's the regulars whose business you want, not the tourists. The regulars are dependable, while the tourists who present a trade that is infrequent, or may never return no matter how good the food is, are far more trouble to serve.