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Comment by dm8 | Hacker News Reader

One my gripes with "michelin star" system is that it is heavily tilted towards European and Japanese food. There is absolutely no Indian, South American, Mediterranean, Thai, or Chinese restaurants (albeit few though) in it's catalog. They are pretty much missing the diverse and exceptional gastronomical experience in doing so.

EDIT: Small change, looks like there are few Chinese restaurants!

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They are pretty transparent about that fact.

There are obvious factors that contribute to a restaurant being visited by Michelin judges, not the least of which is its location relative to other restaurants that are visited. There is also the matter of judges needing to be familiar with a cuisine in order to judge it properly. Without extensive knowledge of ingredients, preparation methods and presentation patterns it is difficult to issue a Michelin rating. If they do not know the culinary landscape how do you imagine they will issue a rating? Doing so would destroy their credibility as a knowledgeable school of critics.

There used to be zero stars in Japan but that has changed over time as the Michelin system has embraced the cuisine and visa versa. It is easy to point out that many cuisines are not represented in the Michelin guide but what are the alternatives? That a limited number of people learn everything there is to know in an instant? That the ratings become so arbitrary that they are meaningless? There is nothing in the Michelin guide that claims that good food cannot be found elsewhere. I fail to see the controversy in a publication that is seemingly doing what it can to stick to what it knows while progressively broadening its horizons.

>> If they do not know the culinary landscape how do you imagine they will issue a rating? Doing so would destroy their credibility as a knowledgeable school of critics.

By hiring more inspectors?

I'm not saying there is cultural bias or something like that. I'm just pointing out the fact that they have certain cuisines that are not represented.

If you consistently claim to be - "the world’s best known independent restaurant and hotel guide" with proudly boasting 100 odd year history, then you better show gastronomic variety. Else it just seems weird.

[1] From their twitter handle description - twitter.com/MichelinGuideUK

It is a business, so I imagine the fairness goal ultimately serves that end. Expanding the rating system probably has to be driven by demand and there has to be a cost/benefit trade-off. Can anyone comment on the comparability of Michelin star ratings between cultural regions?

I don't think they're missing out - they probably enjoy a good Indian restaurant as much as we do. But for what they measure, that's tilted toward a certain kind of presentation that is predominantly done by French and Japanese restaurants. It's not just about the food, and how enjoyable the food is. It's about the wine selection, the interior decoration, and a whole host of other things.

Rather than resenting the Michelin system for not representing the kind of restaurants we love, maybe just recognize that it's not supposed to do that, and find other ways to find and measure restaurants that don't fit the Michelin data model?

> But for what they measure, that's tilted toward a certain kind of presentation that is predominantly done by French and Japanese restaurants. It's not just about the food, and how enjoyable the food is. It's about the wine selection, the interior decoration, and a whole host of other things.

Michelin stars are awarded based on food "quality" alone [1]:

> the quality of ingredients used, the skill in food preparation, the combination of flavours, the value for money, the consistency of culinary standards.

[1] https://guide.michelin.com/hk/en/hong-kong-macau/features/5-...

So why is their such a tilt toward expensive French, Japanese, and modernist restaurants? Sure, they even give stars to a couple of food carts now, but how recent is that development?

This is not to say they aren't improving. But it does say that they didn't always live up to their own stated standards.

FWIW, there is a food cart in Singapore that has a Michelin star -- Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle. Not so much as far as interior design or wine selection goes.

This might interest you but it's in the context of Australia

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-27/asian-food-fine-dinin...

That's not actually true.

Also, Michelin gives awards for fine dining, meaning a specific style of service. Any type of restaurant that meets the service requirements can be awarded Michelin stars, there's a Nigerian restaurant in London that's recently been awarded a star.

> There is absolutely no Indian

The Michelin Guide itself disagrees: “The Michelin Guide isn't in any of the Indian cities but that doesn't mean the red book is void of the subcontinent’s cuisine. In fact, Indian restaurants are listed in most of the territories with the Guide, some of which are in truly surprising cities. Tokyo for instance, is home to three Bib Gourmand rated Indian eateries, while the first Indian restaurant awarded with a Michelin star in Asia happens to be in Macau.”

https://guide.michelin.com/hk/en/hong-kong-macau/travel/8-mi...

Also:

https://guide.michelin.com/us/san-francisco/indian-pakistani...

Two 1-star, One “The Plate”, and Five “Bib Gourmand” in SF Bay.

> South American

Alex Atala’s D.O.M.in São Paolo is a two-star “contemporary Brazilian” restaurant, the first counterexample I could find.

> Mediterranean

https://guide.michelin.com/us/san-francisco/mourad/restauran...

> Thai

https://guide.michelin.com/us/san-francisco/kin-khao/restaur...

EDIT: On review, you might have been referring to geography rather than cuisine, so we’ll do that again from that perspective to cover all bases.

> Indian

As noted above, geographically, that's correct

> South American

https://guide.michelin.com/br/rio-de-janeiro

https://guide.michelin.com/br/sao-paulo

> Mediterranean

Also a valid point, geographically.

> Thai

https://guide.michelin.com/th/bangkok

> Chinese

https://guide.michelin.com/hk/hong-kong-macau

https://guide.michelin.com/tw/taipei

Sorry to be annoying, but as a Brazilian who constantly sees people making this mistake - it's São Paulo, not Paolo. Paolo is the Italian version of the name Paul, Paulo is the Portuguese (also Spanish) version.

But hey, at least you got the til (~ diacritic) right. A lot of people don't even know that's a thing.

>> Mediterranean

>Also a valid point, geographically.

Surely there must be loads of michelin-starred restaurants within the various Mediterranean culinary regions.

That appears to be correct for at least Greece and Italy, and France and Spain though, despite geography, they are usually not intended when people talk about Mediterranean cuisine (also, people often single out the European Mediterranean cuisines individually and use “Mediterranean” more for the cuisines of the African and Southwest Asian coasts); navigation on the Michelin Guide website has some bizarre path dependencies where what seems to be available depends on where you jumped in from, which I think contributed to me overlooking that before.

But there is no Michelin coverage for Africa or for Asia outside of East Asia. Unless I haven't found the right secret path into the guide.

Any chance you could name some Indian restaurants that deserve 3 stars but haven't got them?

I'm not sure if I can answer that as I don't know their rating system. However, I'm confident of the fact that if they have inspectors who have expertise in Indian food then there will be dozens of restaurants from different Indian cities alone. Every part of India has unique food offerings and diversity. Street food alone has so much to offer in India. Now ever popular dishes (across the globe) like Butter Chicken were invented in few restaurants in New Delhi around 70-80 years ago.

[1] Butter Chicken - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter_chicken

My favorites in New Jersey are Mehndi (Morristown) and Moghul (Edison). They're operated by a family from Goa. Also many of the staff.

Both of these look pretty nice, but after some tripadvisor-sleuthing I'm not really convinced that they're quite "michelin-quality". One strong clue would be the apparent lack of a sommelier.

Which doesn't necessarily mean the food isn't "Michelin-quality," it just means that the whole experience isn't "Michelin-quality."

A Michelin star doesn't just come from the literal taste of the food (or the presentation), it comes from every aspect of the restaurant and staff - down to the very cleanliness of the curtains.

Well, Moghul is maybe a little boisterous for Michelin style. Because the bar and restaurant are contiguous. But I don't recall anything negative about Mehndi.

And then there's Nirvana in Manhattan, at penthouse level on on Central Park South. Beautiful cityscape at night. But it's really Bangladeshi, and they don't do Vindaloo.

I'm not sure how relevant that is for traditional Indian. But then, I'm not Indian.

It's relevant for the michelin guide :) I'd also argue that most michelin starred restaurants are hardly traditional.

Wines don't seem like a major aspect of traditional Japanese, Indian or Chinese food. So what would a sommelier do?

Or are you arguing that Michelin just wouldn't rate traditional Japanese, Indian or Chinese restaurants highly?

I've seen sake sommeliers, most of the upscale Indian places in London have not just a wine sommelier, but they also offer excellent cocktails.

Unfortunately I'm not super familiar with nicer Chinese food, but I'd presume that it's not incompatible with drinks either.

I'm not saying that you need to have a sommelier, I'm just saying that the lack of a sommelier is usually a pretty good sign that a restaurant isn't even trying for a star (extremely few restaurants are!).

I don't think Michelin would tend to rate any "traditional" restaurants very highly, to get stars you need to offer the specific Michelin experience.

Rasa in Burlingame is an Indian restaurant with one star.

there's a bunch of chinese restaurants. not sure about the others

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