I remember watching a video on how Michelin Stars started out as a travel guide brochure for the best restaurants in France as a sort of advertisement for Michelin branded tyres (look at all these restaurants you could go to with Michelin tyres!).
How did the Michelin stars become so sought after by top restaurants and chefs? Was the head of the Michelin tyre company also a renowned food connoisseur or something? What about other tyre companiee, why didn’t they do something similar? Are Michelin Stars still given by the tyre company, or has it been spun off into its own thing?
Because French.
Orson Welles: A-HAAAAAaaaa the-Fr3nchhhh
For the same reason that the World Record Holders are decided by a brewery. They just started doing it, and people wanted to be on their list.
That was almost certainly to help settle bar arguments before they became bar fights.
The michelin thing was to get people to drive around more, driving up tourism and tyre use
Why are Nobel prizes so highly revered when they originate from an explosives manufacturer?
my cooking always get 3 Goodyear stars.
Because everybody wants to invent dynamite
Well, at least the Pulitzer Prize makes sense, I guess.
Are there actually Michelin stars given to us restaurants (except for Burger King)?
It’s pretty global, anywhere with a good restaurant culture will probably have at least one or two. I believe Tokyo is the city with the most stars for example, I would have assumed it was Paris or somewhere else french before I found that out
It’s not global, Michelin stars aren’t a thing in Australia atleast. I imagine there’s a lot of places where people don’t get food recs from a tyre company.
Oh that’s interesting, you’ve got me curious. I looked into it and some other company has already established a similar system involving “chef hat” ratings apparently. I guess maybe they didn’t want to bother competing with it.
Apparently Michelin seems to focus on Europe, the Americas and South East Asia. Africa and the rest of Asia seem to be left out, though they seem to be expanding every year (the Philippines got their own guide this year for the first time apparently), so I guess it’s probably just a matter of time before other places are covered.
