This one goes to eleven…
My unreliable alternative to Michelin Star restaurant ratings…
Many will be familiar with the Michelin star grading system for restaurants. One star means “worth stopping for”; two means “worth a detour”; and three stars are “worth a special journey.” If this all seems a bit quaint, it’s worth remembering Le Guide Michelin dates from 1900, and the hidden agenda was to encourage car usage and, in turn, wear tyres out faster.
The criteria for achieving any of these rankings are shrouded in mystery, and I’m not about to add to the uninformed speculation. But I would like to add my own subjective ratings of the places I’ve visited over the years.
To my mind, the simple grading ignores the considerable variations within each tier—though my only point of reference is usually a single meal on a single day, which carries with it a sizeable sampling error. Similarly, and with the same caveat, I think some awards are just plain wrong, and there does appear to be a variation in standards applied across the countries surveyed.
France, Germany, Italy, and Spain seem uniformly reliable, but UK restaurants appear to be judged with tough love. Many I know that are rated as merely “worth a mention” in the guide don’t get the star they would surely be awarded on the other side of the Channel. Conversely, perfectly pleasant but only slightly-above-average places in the USA receive stars that would probably merit only a mention if they were anywhere else in the world.
So… my scoring works on the basis that each official star is worth three of mine. Like any exchange rate, you get more of the dodgy currency for each unit of the reliable one. A single Michelin-starred place that I think is correctly rated would be a 3-pointer for me; a two-star becomes a 6; and a three-star a 9.
This allows a more graduated “between-stars rating.” For example, one of my favourites over twenty years is Club Gascon in London’s Smithfield Market. Michelin reckons it’s worth one star, but I grade it a 5—on the basis that it’s a two-star (i.e., a 6 using my conversion ratio) in all aspects except for not having enough courses. Personally, I’d say that’s a thoroughly good thing, as two and three-star places always have far too many, in my opinion. (Oh yes, the loos are a bit of a squeeze, and Michelin inspectors apparently care about such things…)
Given there are no four-star restaurants, there’s a limit to how far this system can apply. Logically, that’s two of my points above the official grade.
So this guide goes to 11. And if I need to explain the significance of that, you’re very young, on the wrong site, or both.
Only one has ever got there (since demoted), though one still gets tantalisingly close with a 10…
Let me know what you think.
Oh, yes. I think you need an Apple iTunes account to access the spreadsheet that you can sort by column and if you don’t one of these, they are listed in alphabetical order below..
