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Comment by panopticon | Hacker News Reader

> You’re inspected two or three times a year, you never know when. Every meal that goes out could be inspected. That means that, every day, one of the 500 meals that leaves the kitchen could be judged.

It sounds like he wants to be able to relax the quality without hurting his reputation. I can't help but to feel that it's disingenuous somehow, but maybe I'm being unreasonable.

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The Michelin guide (and their readers) have fairly specific expectations for a starred restaurant. Many diners expect a Michelin-starred restaurant to provide flamboyant haute cuisine and are disappointed when they receive simple but excellent food. Restauranteurs can feel pressured to live up to the stereotype of a Michelin-starred restaurant, rather than cooking in their own style. Several restaurants have rejected their stars, primarily to escape this weight of expectation.

http://fortune.com/2014/12/11/michelin-star-restaurants-down... https://elpais.com/elpais/2014/12/02/inenglish/1417521188_19...

So why not just ignore the expectations and cook what you want? If Michelin tourists have different expectations than what Michelin judges judge on, then that's the source of the problem. People shouldn't blindly go visit a restaurant with stars and expect it to be identical to other restaurants with stars.

> “Maybe I will be less famous but I accept that,” he said, adding that he would continue to cook excellent local produce “without wondering whether my creations will appeal to Michelin’s inspectors”.

It sounds to me like he wants to be more adventurous.

Maybe he just wants to focus on cooking interesting food to a high quality, and less on the many factors that might also hurt his rating. Doesn't sound like he'll be hurting for customers, so what's the point of having the ranking?

I don't know what Michelin's standards are or how they decide whether and at what level to put a chef in their ratings. However, it seems to me he believes that his entire Michelin rating might hinge on one inspection. That's a lot of pressure given all the things that can go wrong in a given preparation. Perhaps he feels it's a bit like being required to write code that compiles with no logic bugs on (more or less) the first try (per customer), every time, and wants a break from that.

At the risk of sounding flippant, isn't that just another way of saying he wants to relax his standards?

It's more like a teacher saying that they don't want standardized testing because they want to stop teaching to the test; the chef wants to stop optimizing his cooking for Michelin reviewers. Standards are multidimensional.

Do you do your best work when someone is constantly hovering over your shoulder with a clipboard, their one off checkmark making or breaking your career?

Or do you do your best work when you are free to focus on the problem at hand?

He could just do what he wants anyway, and not care if he loses a couple of stars. There will be one brief period of "OMG, local 3-star restaurant lost ranking" and after that, nothing.

It's a much bigger deal for top-end restaurants than you might think.

(To the detriment of the field, IMO. But I fully admit that is a debatable point.)

But if he's willing to lose all three of his stars, then surely the possibility of losing only one shouldn't be a big deal? Or does he wants to permanently have three stars without the possibility of losing them?

In industries like this, intent matters a lot. By stating up front his intent to change, whether he loses a star (or his listing altogether) is moot.

Compare to if he lost a star and then said he didn't care anyway. Who would interpret that as anything other than sour grapes?

Agreed. But what does he want then? Keeping the stars without being judged?

If he wants to cook his own style (which I can totally understand) he has to put up with it. I am not shielded from my life decisions, either.

Or that he wants to be able to fail sometimes. If you aren't able to fail and keep going, you're never going to be able to push the boundaries.

Or, maybe, live up to a set of different standards and not be pressured to conform to his past set of ideals or those ideals that make for good ratings.

It may be different standards, not necessarily relaxed standards. I think we can give him the benefit of doubt.

Or maybe he just wants to relax.

Movie stars generally seem to feel it's harrowing to have your every single move and word scrutinized and photographed. Maybe this is the same way.

I’m sure that’s exactly it. Always being under that sort of pressure isn’t easy.

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