1900, the founder of Michelin Tire published Michelin Guide, which is a guide for travelers to choose restaurants during their travels. The contents include itinerary planning, scenic spot recommendation, road guidance, etc. Michelin Red Classic (also known as Michelin Red Guide) gives the restaurant a star every year.
The origin of Michelin restaurant
On 1900, the founder of Michelin Tire Company issued a Michelin guide for tourists to choose restaurants, which is updated and published once a year and is known as the European gourmet bible.
Michelin has a history of 120 years. In the early days of Michelin, cars and tires were relatively new things. As a pioneer in the industry, it is natural to have a long-term plan for the company's development. 1900 During the World Expo, Michelin Brothers, the founder of Michelin Company at that time, were optimistic about the development prospect of automobile travel. They think that if car travel is more prosperous, their tires will sell better. Therefore, they collect information that is helpful for car travel, such as restaurants, maps, gas stations, hotels, garages, etc., and publish a Michelin guide, which is the size of a portable manual. Since then, it has been out of control. 1926, Michelin Guide began to mark the quality of restaurants with asterisks, and Michelin-starred restaurants officially started there.
Michelin restaurant and Michelin star restaurant are two different concepts, and Michelin restaurant is not necessarily Michelin star restaurant.
The restaurants listed in the Michelin Red Guide can be called Michelin restaurants. Take Paris as an example. The Michelin Guide includes nearly 600 restaurants, that is, there are 600 Michelin restaurants. However, there are less than 100 star-rated restaurants: 60 one-star, 2-star 15 and 3-star 10. Many restaurants have Michelin signs posted outside their doors, and only Michelin guides will include them (or recommend them).
Restaurants appearing in Michelin Guide should at least get a knife and fork sign, which is the basic evaluation standard of restaurants in the guide, ranging from the highest 5 pairs to 1 pair, mainly indicating the comfort of restaurants.
Who is in charge of Michelin stars? There are a group of "food spies" screened by the devil to judge. They are called "inspectors". Every time inspectors go to restaurants and hotels to judge, they need to hide their identity, sneak into accommodation and taste. The scoring items they need to refer to include food (60%), dining environment (20%), service (10%) and wine matching (10%). If a restaurant has its own characteristics, such as their toilet is beautiful and heroic, or the chef is particularly amiable, the inspector can add points (within 5%) as appropriate.
The rating of a restaurant can only be finally determined by N "Food Detective" tasting+one year 12 visits+Michelin headquarters evaluation. Over the years, these food spies have become more and more difficult to serve, and all the delicious food has been eaten up. Chefs also create innovative dishes in a variety of ways to win higher stars. There are many delicious standards, and amazing surprise is one.
Restaurants appearing in the Michelin guide must at least get the sign of "a knife and fork", which is the basic evaluation standard of restaurants in the guide, ranging from "the highest five pairs to 1 pair", indicating the comfort of restaurants. On this basis, it was selected as Michelin star, from one star to the highest three stars, mainly aiming at cooking standards.
Michelin's audit is quite rigorous, fair and even harsh. Once the inspection is completed, the inspector can't appear in this restaurant for several years to ensure the fairness of the next inspection. The inspector must pay for it himself. There are only 106 Michelin three-star restaurants in the world.
A-star: It is a "worth visiting" restaurant, which is particularly excellent among similar food styles;
Two stars: the restaurant's cooking is very good, and it is a restaurant worth visiting from afar;
Three stars: it is a restaurant that is "worth arranging a special trip" to visit. It has a delicious taste that people will never forget. It is said that it is worth a "flying" trip to eat.
Star rating, especially three-star restaurants, is a matter of infinite scenery, infinite glory and rolling financial resources for a restaurant and chef.
In addition, according to the performance of the restaurant, one to five cross symbols are given.
Five forks and spoons: luxurious traditional style
Four forks and spoons: extremely comfortable.
3 forks and spoons: Very comfortable.
2 forks and spoons: comfortable
1 forks and spoons: basic comfort
If the restaurant is particularly pleasant and laid-back, the spork sign in front will be red instead of black. The sign of the intersection of spoons and forks was designed in 193 1 year to indicate the level of restaurants, and later stars were used as the sign of the highest level of catering.
Head means Bib Gourmand(Bib recommended by Michelin (Bib is the name of Michelin tire man), which provides good food and suitable price.
This sign is called piecettes, which means small coin. A restaurant with this logo means to provide light meals not exceeding 16 euros.
A few years ago, the concept of Michelin-starred food became more and more familiar in China. Sometimes people think that a restaurant is too expensive and may say, "So expensive, do you think you are a Michelin restaurant?" .
It really seems that more and more people are beginning to associate "expensive", "delicious" and "Michelin", but friends who don't know will definitely wonder, "Isn't Michelin a tire company? Why do they want to evaluate, there are so many viewers? " .
So this time we will answer this question and learn about Michelin and Michelin cuisine.
How did Michelin, who sells tires, begin to evaluate restaurants? As we all know, Michelin is a famous tire company, which has made great contributions to the development and progress of modern society. For example, 1889 introduced the first detachable bicycle tire, and 1895 introduced the first pneumatic tire for automobiles. From the perspective of an enterprise, Michelin can be regarded as "outstanding contribution after a hundred years". In addition to outstanding performance in their own "jobs", for those who care about food, Michelin may first be associated with Michelin-starred restaurants.
Michelin's evaluation of food comes from its publication Michelin Guide. In fact, the original Michelin guide was born for a simple purpose, that is, to let people drive out to find something to eat.
Because the automobile tire industry didn't start for a long time, people didn't have the habit of driving to distant places to find something to eat. Therefore, taking the 1900 Paris World Expo as an opportunity, Michelin will integrate the information of restaurants, maps, gas stations, hotels and so on into a booklet, which will give more people more opportunities and willingness to drive out, tire consumption will be faster, and Michelin will do more business.
With the development of Michelin, the popularity and influence of this red Michelin guide is growing. More tourists follow the above guidelines to find restaurants to taste delicious food, and more and more restaurants care about the evaluation of them in this manual. And Michelin also seized this opportunity very well. They began to set up a special food tasting team, and constantly explored and tried more restaurants, making the Michelin guide more and more perfect.
It was not until 1926 that the asterisk was officially used as a grade to judge the quality of restaurants, and Michelin-starred restaurants were born.
Are all Michelin-starred restaurants delicious? What do different stars mean? Michelin's real star-rated restaurants have three standard grades: one-star, two-star and three-star, representing different cooking levels and recommendation degrees. Let's have a brief look.
Michelin's star rating is mainly composed of several parts, such as the level of ingredients, cooking techniques and tastes, the degree of innovation, and whether the cooking level can be maintained stably. Among them, in addition to publicity and operation, it also benefited from Michelin's "elusive" American food tasting group, which made restaurants and chefs dare not slack off. So in the past 100 years, Michelin-starred restaurants have become more and more influential, and in recent years, they have begun to explore restaurants in China.
Outside Europe, "Michelin Restaurant" has only certain reference value. Although Michelin is highly respected in many countries, a restaurant will be famous if it is rated as a "Michelin star" restaurant, but everything is difficult to be absolute. For example, for Chinese food, the evaluation of Michelin guide has only a little reference value.
The so-called "Michelin restaurant" originated in France in Europe. Although French cuisine is also world-famous and highly respected, there is no difference in food culture, but the difference in food culture is huge. It can be said that any kind of food culture is not just the dishes themselves. Without local culture, products, history, eating habits and other factors, the charm of any food will be largely eliminated.
Therefore, Michelin restaurant, a food evaluation method based on European food culture, is definitely limited. Although Michelin's food tasting group is composed of people from all over the world, and the evaluation criteria are also determined by hard conditions such as ingredients, cost performance, cooking skills and innovation level. As long as people have their own subjective ideas, personal tastes and different choices, the restaurants recommended by Michelin Guide are good references.
So there are so many Michelin restaurants this time. If it helps, please help me forward my collection.
What do you think of Michelin restaurant? You can comment and share your opinions.
Michelin's restaurant rating has now become a recognized authority in the world, but the origin of this idea is ridiculous, even incredible. The most dramatic thing is that Michelin's job is to make car tires, which has nothing to do with the catering industry, but has done something that has a far-reaching impact on the world catering industry. The point is that it has been done. You know, how many people dream of becoming such an authority and have made great efforts, and they can't replicate Michelin's success.
It is not difficult to understand why Michelin did such a seemingly unrelated thing. As a tire company, Michelin has been very successful, relying on excellent product quality and good social reputation, becoming a well-known tire company. On the premise of ensuring product quality, how to increase sales? Michelin is not thinking about how to snatch cakes from competitors, but how to make the cakes in the market bigger and get a slice of it. So Michelin thought of a way to make a travel guide. They believe that if their guidebooks are sincere enough, they can impress more people to drive out. The most important item in the guidebook is the restaurant grade. After all, human pursuit of food is eternal. Therefore, Michelin began to put this into practice, not simply as a marketing tool, but really and seriously persisted in doing it until it became popular all over the world.
In fact, Michelin's amateur restaurant rating is so authoritative that it seems accidental, but it is inevitable. It is precisely because Michelin does not involve the catering industry that the restaurant rating can be guaranteed to be unaffected by stakeholders, which is difficult for relevant units and individuals in the industry to do. This is also the failure of countless successful enterprises, associations and other organizations that want to replicate Michelin.
189 1 year, in a bicycle race in Paris, a bicycle ran very fast and finally won the championship. Afterwards, the audience were curious whether the car cheated or not, otherwise how could it run so fast. After inspection by the referee group, it was found that its tires were very special. Bicycles at that time were all iron tires, so we can learn from the scene of riding two iron wheels. It must feel like Prince Nezha stepped on the hot wheels. But this bike uses Michelin detachable tires, which is both light and fast.
1889, edouard michelin inherited his grandfather's business-an old bicycle parts factory, which was later renamed Michelin Company. Edouard michelin is an innovative and serious person, and he demands that everything he does be the best. After 189 1 invented detachable bicycle tires, the company successively introduced carriage tires and pneumatic tires for automobiles, personally designed the body of Peugeot cars, independently designed and manufactured a large number of bombing planes, and launched the world-famous radial tires at 1946.
In addition to the above sensational products, Michelin accidentally published a magazine, which also made it a world-renowned authoritative appraisal agency for restaurants with a long history.
1900, edouard michelin published a guide for tourists to choose restaurants during their travels-Michelin Red Guide, which is as rigorous and meticulous as other Michelin products. Once published, it was very popular, and both gourmets and ordinary people regarded it as a treasure, and even called it the "European gourmet Bible". Edouard michelin originally thought of a book as a ticket, but it was so popular that it became a book published every year.
In the second Michelin Red Guide, the stars of French restaurants began to be fixed, and restaurants were divided into one to three stars, with three stars being the highest. At that time, the response was strong, and the selection scope gradually expanded from France to the whole of Europe. At that time, Michelin directors appeared in almost all European restaurants.
Of course, these executives are also professional gourmets invited by Michelin. Going to the restaurant is to spend money quietly, without revealing your identity to let the restaurant know, and make preparations in advance. And carefully select local restaurants, have a detailed understanding of the dishes in the restaurant, and ensure an objective and fair score.
With the development of the Internet, many online celebrity detective clerks are now doing similar jobs, but they are not as professional as they are, and there is no ranking list.
Michelin Samsung's evaluation is extremely strict. So far, there are only more than 50 Michelin-starred restaurants in the world. At present, the circulation of Michelin Red Guide is still very high, selling nearly 6.5438+0 million copies every year, which shows that everyone recognizes them.
However, Michelin's selection criteria are only suitable for the west or Japan, close to the European diet. The only Michelin-starred restaurant in China used to be Tang Ge. If you want to become a Michelin three-star restaurant, you must learn their art of setting dishes and cooking style, which obviously does not conform to the form of Chinese food. Although Tang Ge is famous, the customers who have been there don't have many good comments, which shows that the Michelin scoring standard is not suitable for the taste of China people. Now Tang Ge has been reduced to a star.
Michelin can do so many things well, which also shows a truth: even if one thing is simple, you may achieve great success as long as you do it seriously and persist in innovation and rigor.
I think the main reason is that Michelin brothers have a long-term vision and a good malleability of thinking. During the 1900 World Expo, Michelin Brothers, the founder of Michelin Tire Company at that time, was optimistic about the development prospect of automobile travel. They are keenly aware that if car travel is more prosperous, their tires will sell better, so they combine restaurants, maps, gas stations, hotels, garages and other things that are helpful for car travel and publish a Michelin guide booklet the size of a portable manual.
Michelin tires began in the south-central French city of Lemmont-Ferrand. France is a big country of European cuisine. With the support of French cuisine, this booklet flourished rapidly, and later a special Michelin restaurant was developed.
Michelin restaurants have three grades:
1 star: a good restaurant worth stopping for a taste (hehe, such a simple description is of course because Michelin makes tires);
2 stars: first-class cooking, good food and wine, worth running more, but the cost will not be low;
3 stars: Perfect top-level cooking, worth making an appointment and making a special trip. You can enjoy delicious food, excellent wine, thoughtful service and elegant dining environment, but it costs a lot of money.
Let me talk about French food that helped Michelin restaurant get started. French cuisine is the most important dish in western food and a pearl of western culture. The chef of the president of the United States is required to be good at French food. French cuisine is characterized by extensive selection of materials, exquisite and fresh materials, delicious taste, and emphasis on the coordination of color, fragrance, taste and shape (France is like China in cooking in Europe). It likes beef, vegetables, poultry, seafood and fruits very much, especially snails, fungi, asparagus, lilies and lobsters. French food is usually eaten raw and likes to be seasoned with wine. There are strict rules for the collocation of dishes and wine, such as prohibition of wine for clear soup and champagne for turkey. Famous French dishes include foie gras, oyster cup, roasted snail, Maxini chicken, onion soup, sirloin steak and Marseille fish soup.
This is definitely not the original idea.
In fact, many enterprises in the world are like this. Doing a humble thing well may be better than a big plan.
Michelin used to make tires. The tires were already made and he began to expand. As a service, I published a guidebook. This car seller or tourist must be doing it, too.
But they are more for their own interests, and the natural effect is not very good.
However, Michelin put aside his interests and did it fairly, which achieved surprisingly good results and made him famous.
There are actually many cases in this.
Ma Yungang started making yellow pages, and then Taobao. Alipay is just a tool of Taobao. And then this.
Alipay may be different.
And word of mouth is very useful, and everyone thinks it is a high standard. Actually, it was just done by a mysterious client.
This question reminds us that many companies actually started from sideline business.
Tencent specializes in computer chat tool QQ. Now playing games, WeChat supports most of the financial resources.
Apple used to be a computer, but now it depends on iPhone. Although it is still a computer, when I think of Apple, the first thing I think of is the iPhone.
Xiaomi makes mobile phones, but there are too many other products, such as TV boxes, desk lamps, sockets, bracelets, balance cars and so on.
These companies are brilliant market-oriented sideline businesses. Compared with Michelin tire company, their sideline seems unexpected, because its initial purpose is to buy good tires, and then feel that car sales will go up, and then feel that car travel will go up. Finally, it simply summarized the local restaurants and introduced them to the potential users of tires, and the Michelin guide was formed.