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 equals “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 so wear tyres faster.
The criteria for what it takes to achieve any of these rankings is 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 been over the years.
To my mind, the simple grading ignores the considerable variations within each tier, albeit my only point of reference is usually on the basis of one meal on one day so carries with it a sizeable sampling error. Similarly, and with the same caveat, I think some are just plain wrong and there does appear to a variation of standards applied in countries surveyed.
France, Germany, Italy & Spain seem uniformly reliable but UK restaurants seem to be judged with tough love. Many I know that are rated as worthy of a mention in the guide don’t get the star that would surely be awarded on the other side of the channel. Conversely, perfectly pleasant but only slight-above-average places in the USA get stars that would probably only merit 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 so like any exchange rate, you get more of the dodgy currency for each unit of the reliable one. So, a single Michelin-star place that I think is correctly rated would be rated as a 3-pointer for me; a two-star would be 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 a star but I grade it a 5 on the basis that it’s a two-star in all aspects apart from not having enough courses. In this case, that’s a ‘thoroughly good thing’ as two and three-star places always have way too many IMHO. Oh yes, the loos are a bit of a squeeze and Michelin inspectors apparently care about these things…
Given there a no four-star restaurants, there is a limit to this which this system can apply. Logically, this is two of my points over 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) but 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 it.