Wanting by Luke Burgis

Author:Luke Burgis [Burgis, Luke]
Language: eng
Format: epub

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When most French chefs open a new restaurant, they wait in trepidation for a Michelin inspector—whom they may or may not recognize as one—to walk through the front door.

On any given day, any one of hundreds of plates that their kitchen sends to the dining room could wind up in front of an inspector. After finishing the meal, the inspector might flash credentials and ask to see the kitchen. Or they might depart anonymously.

The inspector’s verdict has life-altering consequences. Having a Michelin star added can make a chef’s career and help a restaurant become financially sustainable. Having one taken away can start a death spiral.

Inspectors are kind of like the mysterious characters named “Watchers” in Orson Scott Card’s short story “Unaccompanied Sonata.” A young boy living in a dystopian, authoritarian society is declared a musical prodigy. He’s given strict rules to follow about how he is to develop his talent. When he breaks the rules, a band of anonymous men called Watchers show up, unannounced, wielding sharp knives, to cut off his fingers. Either you play by their rules, or you lose the ability to play.10

In 2003, the Michelin watchers swooped in on Bernard Loiseau, a three-star chef in France. They told him they were worried about the lack of inventiveness and artistic direction of his restaurant, implying that he might lose a star. (And Gault Millau, another restaurant guide in France, had recently downgraded Loiseau’s restaurant La Côte d’Or from a 19/20 rating to 17/20.) Around this time, after a full day of work in his kitchen, Loiseau committed suicide.

Back in 1994, at the age of thirty-two, British chef Marco Pierre White was the youngest chef ever to be awarded three stars. In 1999, only five years later, he retired. “I gave Michelin inspectors too much respect, and I belittled myself,” he explained. “I had three options: I could be a prisoner of my world and continue to work six days a week, I could live a lie and charge high prices and not be behind the stove or I could give my stars back, spend time with my children and re-invent myself.”11 He was the first three-star chef in history to shut down and walk away.

Paris chef Alain Senderens, tired of trying to keep up, closed down his three-star restaurant and revamped it, which kept Michelin temporarily away. “I feel like having fun,” he told the New York Times in 2005. “I don’t want to feed my ego anymore. I am too old for that. I can do beautiful cuisine without all the tra-la-la and chichi, and put the money into what’s on the plate.”

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