Michelin stars: Getting to the gold standard - and keeping it

Mere inclusion in the Michelin Guide is meant to be an honour in itself, but the ultimate accolade is to be awarded a Michelin star (or two or three).

Ireland currently has four two-star restaurants — including dede, in West Cork — and 12 one-star restaurants, and Michelin are utterly inscrutable as to what lies ahead on Monday.

For a chef, Michelin star recognition has been compared to Oscar success or an athlete winning an Olympic medal. 

The difference, however, is that unlike an Oscar or a medal, nobody can take back the accolade after it’s been awarded (barring an athlete’s failed drugs tests, of course).

The Michelin Guide was initially given away free to drivers, to help promote Michelin tyres. 

But by 1920, it was in a format not unlike today’s version — with a team of inspectors visiting restaurants and grading them. Stars were first awarded in the 1926 edition.

The guides once paid for themselves through sales, but these days new regional guides are usually created in partnership with tourism departments of regional or national governments.

For example, the New York Times reported that Visit California paid Michelin $600,000 (€553,000) to create a guide for Los Angeles in 2019. 

As the New York Times puts it: “You can’t buy stars, but you can buy the possibility.”

The Michelin Guide Great Britain & Ireland was launched in 1974. In that first guide, Arbutus Lodge in Cork was awarded a star. Ballymaloe House went on to win one in 1975.

“Achieving a Michelin star is a really nice endorsement for a chef and also for the staff and the restaurant in general,” Derry Clarke says, whose restaurant L’Ecrivain on Baggot St, Dublin, was first awarded a star in 2003.

“Keeping the star is the really hard part. We held it for something like 18 years [until closing the business] and we really benefited.

“It brought in a different demographic, notably British and international diners at weekends — diners will seek you out,” he adds.

Derry and his wife Sallyanne are the team behind The Club Hotel at Goff’s restaurant, in Kildare, and are no longer chasing stars. Instead, they’re focused on “good quality food and happy diners”.

Clarke says: “I love how [Michelin] have opened up to new cuisines and atmospheres in recent years, while still demanding a very high standard of cooking.”

While stars are the most prestigious awards Michelin gives, they have also developed awards for sustainability, service and mentorship and have a separate award for less expensive restaurants called the Bib Gourmand — named for Bibendum himself.

Last week, six new Bib Gourmand awards were announced for Ireland, denoting “good food at moderate prices”. Winners included Solas Tapas in Dingle, Dublin’s La Gordita, and Cork’s Ichigo Ichie.

The award for Ichigo Ichie is particularly noteworthy as, in the 2023 guide, that restaurant held a Michelin star. Last autumn, chef Takashi Miyazaki decided to change the focus of Ichigo Ichie from fine dining to bistro.

“We had seen a drop off in business, mainly because our costs had shot up,” Miyazaki says.

“We had to make a change. We didn’t contact Michelin or anything, but they must have heard. On our second day open [January 10, 2024] we had a visit from an inspector — I’m not sure it was him, but he asked so many questions!

“I was so shocked, but also so happy to hear we had received a Bib Gourmand. We are now fully booked. We held the star for six years, but I really tried not to think about it and just concentrate on my cooking.

As costs soared for local ingredients and Brexit made sourcing Japanese ingredients more difficult, something had to change,” he says.

“My advice to chefs is to focus on standards, on your customers, and your staff. Our focus is now more casual, but I will continue to make my soba buckwheat noodles fresh every day and my signature dashi broth.”

So is pursuing a star worth it?

The awarding of a star will lead to a notable increase in bookings and can help build international profile — but standards need to be kept impeccable.

In theory, the awards are for the food alone and Michelin do occasionally award stars to humble restaurants, but this is still rare. Two- and three-star restaurants have significantly more staff on hand to fold your napkin and remove crumbs after each course.

While the two chefs have had positive experiences with Michelin, it is important to remember that one of Ireland’s greatest chefs, Kevin Thornton, was demoted from two stars to one and then had that star removed — leading to the closure of his restaurant.

In 2019, one of France’s most lauded chefs, Marc Veyrat, was demoted from three to two stars and admitted he contemplated suicide.

Among the reasons given was that he had used English Cheddar in a soufflé ( quelle horreur), something he vehemently denied. Later Veyrat sued Michelin to obtain the inspector’s notes, but lost.

In 2003, chef Bernard Loiseau died by suicide not long after the downgrading of his restaurant by the Gault-Milau Guide — with rumours that Michelin were considering doing the same. 

Loiseau was reportedly suffering from depression and heavily in debt, so it would be unfair to blame a food guide for his death. However, it illustrates the seriousness with which these awards are taken.

So what can we expect on Monday? I honestly have no idea, so take all predictions with a pinch of salt.

My instinct is that there will be little or no changes to the current roster of stars, but Ireland’s first three-star restaurant has to come sometime — so why not in 2024? 

I leave you with the words of Derry Clarke: “Remember that losing a star is not the worst thing. You will likely get more publicity than you received when you gained the star and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”