Everything You Wanted To Know About The Michelin Guide and Michelin Star Restaurants

With the announcement that Toronto and Vancouver will have their own Michelin Guide, I thought it would be nice to do a video on the history of the Michelin Guide and talk about how Michelin stars are awarded.

The Michelin Guide is created by the Michelin tire company in the early 1900s. At that time, there were very few cars on the road. So to encourage drivers to drive (and use tires more), Michelin created a guide which contained maps and a listing of hotels and gas stations around France. Then they published similar guides for various European countries on the same basis.

Beginning around the 1920-1930s, Michelin started to rate restaurants and in 1936, the criteria that is now used to award stars was finalized.

1 star : High quality cooking, worth a stop
2 stars : Excellent cooking, worth a detour
3 stars : Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey

Restaurants are assessed on the following criteria:

-Quality of Products
-Mastery of flavour and cooking techniques
-Personality of chef represented in dining experience
-Harmony of flavours
-Consistency between inspector visits

Funny that service is not included in this criteria but I believe it is part of the assessment process. Having said that, no one really knows the exact criteria that judges take into account.

With this exciting new, until the Vancouver Michelin guide is produced, I will go back an update all my previous reviews and give my assessment of which restaurants deserve stars. Let's see if I am correct!

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[doublewides]

Very interesting video. While I have eaten at a few Michelin star restaurants I’ve more often focused on James Beard award winners and nominees.