Name: What it takes to get a Michelin Star | CNBC Reports
Uploaded: 2019-12-19T08:10:27.000Z
Duration: 7 min 2 s
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The Michelin star - it's been described as the Oscars of the restaurant industry.

Modal verbs - B1

A single Michelin star can take a restaurant from a riverside favorite to a must visit,

but getting one takes a lot of work.  Do you feel like maybe you're married to

your job?  Yeah, I am married to my job. I'm here all

the time. The Michelin Guide has been heralded as a

benchmark for excellence for more than 100 years.

This guide employs inspectors to review more than 40,000 restaurants and hotels around

the world.    According to the guide, one Michelin star

marks a very good restaurant in its category. Two stars indicate the restaurant is “worth

a detour” while three stars – the crème de la crème – denote a restaurant with

“exceptional cooking” worthy of a special trip.

These stars are so desirable some chefs work more than 70 hours in a week chasing them.

So what does it take to get a Michelin star?  The Michelin guide was started in France

in 1889 by these two brothers:  Edouard and Andre Michelin. They owned a tire company,

Michelin and Co, and believed if they produced a guide highlighting a list of places to eat

and rest, drivers would spend more time on the road. That in turn would wear out their

tires, pushing up the company's sales. The little-known guidebook soon expanded

throughout Europe and eventually the world, growing into the fine dining authority it

has become today. More than 30 million guides have been sold worldwide.

As of 2018, Tokyo held the title for the city with the highest number of restaurants awarded

with Michelin stars.  The city boasts 234 Michelin-starred restaurants, followed by

Paris with 121 and then Milan with 107. So what goes into getting the guide's coveted

star? I'm visiting Pied a Terre to find out. The restaurant received its first Michelin

star in 1993, and its second in 1996. It currently holds one star.

It's 7:15 am. It's really dark and I'm really tired. But this is the time chefs at

the Pied a Terre restaurant come in five days a week to work - and most don't leave until

11:30 pm. Let's go  find out how they cope with this.

The day you learn you've gotten a Michelin star is a very proud moment for your career.

All those hours working for so many years are paying off. Sometimes you feel like you're

working for 16 hours and you're thinking, where is it going to take me?

The enviable job of dishing out stars and rating food establishments falls on the shoulders

of Michelin's full-time inspectors.  To date, its inspectors have reviewed hotels

and restaurants across more than 24 countries. To get a Michelin Star, you need to be consistent. Chefs

have to produce food at a high standard every time because it's impossible to know when

Michelin star inspectors – who are always anonymous -  will come by the restaurant.

Would you say you're a perfectionist?  Yeah, I tend to lose my temper if things are

not the way I want them to be, and it's not like it will matter to anyone else. Everything

has to be at the right place every single time just because I want to get better and

better at keeping things consistent.  Achieving a star also requires a mastery of

flavor and cooking techniques. The restaurant must use quality ingredients and provide value

for money. Michelin stars are valued, not only for the

prestige, but also because they can contribute to the financial success of a restaurant. Restaurants

generally put up their prices after securing a new star. Pied a Terre saw a 25% increase

in revenue after gaining its first star and a 40% increase after its second.But there's

one aspect about running a restaurant that is rarely talked about: how do chefs deal

with the pressure of maintaining a Michelin Star?

Head chefs like Asimakis are working 70-hour work weeks. That's 46% higher than the 48-hour a

week limit in most countries. In 2017, a trade union survey found that 27% of chefs

in London admitted to resorting to alcohol to cope with their shifts and 51% admitted

to suffering from depression because of the long hours.

Honestly if you want to make money, don't go into the restaurant business. You've

got to invent an app or something. That's Skye Gyngell, currently the head chef at Spring

Restaurant.  About a decade ago, she was the head chef

at a humble restaurant, Petersham Nurseries Café, where she hosted the likes of Madonna

and Mick Jagger. She was really enjoying her job, but then everything changed after

she was awarded a star. The pressure for me personally changed. All

of a sudden we were completely overbooked. People would come and say, “You call yourself

a Michelin star restaurant.”  We literally had unisex loos and had to wait in the rain

for them. That became quite hard. We had to think, “Is this going to be okay? Are

they going to be happy?” She's not alone. Many chefs have tried returning their stars

because of the pressure of having to maintain them and customer's heightened expectations. In

2003, renowned French chef Bernard Loiseau committed suicide amid rumors he would lose his third

star. The Michelin Guide has maintained that it awards restaurants, not chefs, with stars.

We reached out to Michelin for comment, but did not hear back before publication.

But even amidst this controversy, Michelin stars are still coveted around the world.

Just do the work, and if a Michelin star comes, that's amazing. If that's all you're

working for, it's a kind of moving target that breeds anxiety.

The ultimate goal is getting a second Michelin star at some point.

And then a third?  I'll never think of my life of getting a

third. I'm a humble man. I just want to go as far as I can. I'm still very young.