How Do Michelin Stars Actually Work?

The Sporkful

SiriusXM Podcasts

Arts

4.6 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2023

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Since the Michelin Guide was created in 1926, it has awarded about 3,000 stars to select restaurants around the world. And while Michelin has a ton of brand recognition, the system it uses to rate restaurants is also famously secretive. Today on The Sporkful, we pull back the curtain on the guide and speak with a former Michelin inspector about his experience handing out stars.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's
0:02.0	time to announce New York's Michelin-Stard restaurants.
0:06.0	Last year, Chef V.J.
0:08.0	Camaro was at the Michelin Guide ceremony in New York,
0:10.0	where Michelin awards their famous stars.
0:13.0	B.J. thought maybe his restaurant, Sema, was in the running.
0:16.0	So as they read out the list of winners...
0:18.0	You can tell them my legs were kind of shivering,
0:20.0	because they were reading all the lists alphabetically.
0:23.0	63 Clinton.
0:25.0	So, Semma is like all the way the bottom.
0:27.0	So it's like by the time when they were reading all the lists,
0:30.0	oh my God, that was super, super stressful. I almost got a heart attack.
0:34.0	I said,
0:35.0	V.J grew up in Tom Alnadu in the south of India.
0:40.0	After going to culinary school and working in a couple of restaurants there, he made his way to California.
0:44.5	In 2021, he moved to New York to become executive chef at Semma, which would be a brand new restaurant
0:49.5	serving authentic regional South Indian cuisine in a fine dining setting.
0:53.4	When it opened, Semmo was a big hit, but at the Michelin ceremony,
0:57.2	VJ didn't know what to expect.
0:59.1	He wasn't sure whether his restaurant was Michelin material.
1:01.8	The announcers at the event worked their way through the alphabet.
	...

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