Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Year : 2, Issue: 15
Gothamist: Manhattan remains the peak of fine dining, at least according to the anonymous inspectors of the Michelin tire company.
More than a dozen Manhattan restaurants earned new accolades at the Michelin Guide’s awards ceremony in Hell’s Kitchen on Monday night, along with a handful from Brooklyn and one in Westchester County.
Jungsik, in Tribeca, became the first Korean restaurant to earn three Michelin stars in the United States, and the only awardee to gain three stars for the first time. Four restaurants kept the highest honor of three Michelin stars, including Eleven Madison Park, Le Bernardin, Masa, and Per Se.
In a moment that drew gasps and shocked laughs from the audience, two of the three New York restaurants earning two stars included the SoHo restaurant César, founded by chef César Ramirez, and Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare, the restaurant that lost all three of its stars when Ramirez parted ways with ownership in an acrimonious and litigious split last year.
Eight New York restaurants earned their first Michelin star, including the reimagined Café Boulud on the Upper East Side; Bar Miller, a 15-course omakase restaurant in Alphabet City; and La Bastide by Andrea Calstier, in Westchester County.
New York added 16 new “Bib Gourmands,” a special designation for restaurants offering “good quality food for a good value.” Bibs are often privately referred to as favorite restaurants of the anonymous Michelin inspectors when they’re eating on their own time (and dime).
The Michelin Guide was started in 1900 by the tire company to get French people excited about driving, which was then a rare feat.
Eventually the guide began ranking restaurants by stars, with three stars indicating that the spot was worth a journey, two stars for places with excellent cuisine “worth a detour,” and one star was very good for its category. Today about 150 restaurants around the world have three stars, and roughly 500 restaurants have two stars.
Michelin stars are awarded by anonymous diners known as “inspectors,” whose identity is not revealed by the company.
The star system has come under fire for decades due to its secrecy, lack of diversity in selections, and for the pressure some chefs feel to chase this prestige and perfection, among other critiques of the process.
Yet chefs and restaurateurs still care.
“They matter a lot,” said Amanda McMillan, general manager of the Four Horsemen group, which runs a wildly popular wine bar and restaurant in Williamsburg that kept its one-star designation.
“We’ve gotten so much recognition, it’s such a nice feather in our caps for our cooks to be able to say ‘I work at a Michelin-starred place.’ It’s so legitimizing to all the hard work that we do. It means so much, we’re really excited about it.”
Yet the awards are less important to the general public, according to Rick Camac, executive director of industry relations for the Institute of Culinary Education and a restaurateur who has worked on opening multiple celebrated restaurants in New York, including Fatty Crab and Pig & Khao.
Camac cites the reviews he received from the New York Times as driving steady and noticeable traffic to his restaurants, whereas his two “Bib Gourmand” recognitions were “virtually worthless” to the business and diners.
