Let the Tires Down

Sitting in an austere, hushed room somewhere in Asia, a waiter presented me and my teenage son each with a large plate. At its centre, a twig. From a tree. Garnished with flowers and with a sauce of some sort on the side, it nonetheless tasted like…twig. “I love how the richer you are,” my son said, “the more likely someone is to be like: ‘here. Eat a stick.’”

The baffling thing was, this restaurant had all the accolades. The Michelin stars. The place on the World’s 50 Best list. And yet, it was utterly devoid of joy. It was self-serious and tedious and often the food tasted like stick, or rock, or something else you probably shouldn’t eat.

'Michelin starred'. 'World’s Best'. These are terms that carry so much weight, they have become shorthand for quality, for status, and for success. As of right now, there’s no real alternative that holds as much weight as recognition from Michelin or a spot on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. And yet, these awards and lists and the institutions that control them have serious flaws. Each system, in its own way, can be gamed. They tend to privilege certain types of restaurants (fancy European; high end Asian) and certain locations (popular destinations; places that have paid for Michelin to be there). Hidden gems, food cultures that don’t fit into the rubric of what Michelin is looking for, and restaurants (and entire countries) that don’t have large PR budgets all get ignored. There must be a better way. 

THE CURRENT SYSTEM

When it was announced this past November that the Michelin Guide would be heading to New Zealand, the reaction was not altogether rapturous. It was reported that the NZ government paid $6 million for the privilege of being considered, a pay-for-play arrangement that the Australian government purportedly turned down in recent years. In many ways, Michelin’s model – of charging new areas of coverage for its presence – makes sense. Michelin is notoriously fastidious, relying on a large global team of inspectors who are extremely well trained to assess restaurants using a somewhat opaque set of criteria. What is known is that different inspectors dine at restaurants multiple times, and that fine dining – fanciness, in other words – is the realm in which multiple stars are possible. 

It’s no small undertaking to send a team of knowledgeable inspectors into a new market and have them explore it thoroughly. Someone has to pay for that work. But the model highlights one of the glaring issues with this hugely influential guide, which is that its modus operandi means that only areas that can afford to pay get the coverage. Because of this, huge swaths of the world are left out. 

Michelin has also long endured criticism that its criteria is outdated, that it unfairly benefits European and Japanese-style formality, and that – despite its attempts to adapt via the Bib Gourmand awards and other tweaks to the system – serious diners these days don’t care about the things that Michelin favours. My twig meal seems like a case in point: While the service and cooking were technically unfaultable, the things that I value – deliciousness, cultural relevance, fun, joy, humanity – were lacking. 

In the case of New Zealand, concerns have been raised about the Guide changing the nature of the dining scene by its very presence. In an article in The Spinoff, Nick Iles listed 15 reasons he thought Michelin’s presence in Aotearoa is a bad idea. Among them, he points out that  “Judges have been flown in from Europe to rank and rate, without any meaningful understanding of our food history,” and, “Cookery will become homogenised as all the chefs who actually care start cooking in a broadly Michelin-shaped way that defeats originality.” The worst-case-scenario sees the country’s actual dining culture being watered down by chefs who are cooking for the accolades rather than their own tastes or culture.

The other big player, the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, is, at its core, a popularity contest. Chefs, former winners, food writers and various other gourmands are asked by a global panel (made up of people who live and work in those areas) to send in a list of their nominees. They are specifically asked not to use their status as judges for personal gain, and are supposed to have actually eaten at their nominated restaurants during the judging period. 

But this system is easily manipulated. Panel members are known to go on PR-funded eating trips in luxe locations. A good publicist will make sure every savvy food writer or well-known chef eats at their clients’ restaurants, especially during events that bring a lot of food folks to town (including World’s 50 Best events – the snake eats its tail). People nominate their friends, their former mentors, places they’ve visited without eating at competitors or more culturally relevant spots that might not have invited them – places that wouldn’t even think to engage with the schmoozing and publicity needed, places that are wonderful but don’t know how to play the game.

Popular destinations like Paris, New York and Tokyo have a distinct advantage. There’s a reason why Australia’s presence on the list dipped significantly in the pandemic years and those following – no one could come here, therefore only Australian voters could nominate Australian restaurants. 

As a professional assessor of restaurants myself (and a former World’s 50 Best voter), I am not without bias. I’m a member of the Age Good Food Guide senior panel, and the Age’s chief restaurant critic, which means that I work within a scoring/rating system that has many similarities to Michelin, and as such draws lots of criticism similar to the criticism I’m doling out. It’s my hope that our own system of hats and scores eventually becomes more inclusive and fairer, and I know my colleagues and superiors share that aim. 

And on a global level I once took a shot at an alternative, along with the folks at Food & Wine and Travel & Leisure magazines, who hired me to compile a list of the best restaurants in the world. With this project, we tried to overcome many of the pitfalls of the other lists, and to combine some of their strengths: like World’s 50 Best we assembled a global panel of people we trusted to nominate restaurants, and like Michelin, we sent someone – me – to actually eat at each restaurant and assess whether it deserved a spot on the list.

But the key difference was the criteria. We weren’t looking for the fanciest restaurant, or the one with the most ambition. We were looking for joy, for deliciousness, and for a sense that the restaurant represented the culture of the place it was in. We wanted to have the answer to the question: If I am in this city or country, what is the one place I cannot miss? This allowed me to pick winners at every price point, and to consider places on their own merits, not using a set of qualifications that may not be culturally relevant or appropriate. It allowed me to pick a breakfast hummus place in Lebanon and a taco truck in Tijuana. Yes, Noma was on the list. But so was a community lunch spot in a township in South Africa. 

Of course, my list had its flaws, too. One person simply cannot withstand the travel and the eating and the exhaustion to single-handedly cover the whole world. And while we strived for diversity in our advisors, I think it’s fair to say that one American/Australian white woman should not be the single arbiter of what is good. But I do think we got closer – certainly in terms of our ambitions for the list and what it stood for – than anyone has come since. (Like many things, the project was killed by the pandemic.)

A NEW MODEL

Here’s what I’d love to see: A list or set of awards, nominated by chefs, writers and lovers of food from all over the world, and then chosen from those nominations by a team of smart, engaged critics who actually represent the global community. Effort should be made to engage with all food cultures, to raise up indigenous foodways, to take things as they are instead of forcing a Eurocentric, fine-dining ethos on the method of ranking. 

Rather than see this paid for by tourist boards or other means that privilege wealthy communities, a page should be taken from the original Michelin playbook, which bet on the idea that if people drove to eat at restaurants far and wide, they’d wear out their Michelin tires in the process. In the 21^st century, the folks who stand to benefit from food-obsessed travellers are credit card companies, airlines and hotel chains. 

Some of these companies are already heading in that direction. Amex is a sponsor of many guides (including New Zealand’s Cuisine Good Food Guide), and also the owner of Resy, which recently released a list of 100 U.S. restaurants that gets pretty close to the spirit I’d like to see in a worldwide list. MasterCard sponsors The Fork awards in Europe. Surely one of these international brands could stand to get more ambitious, and help establish a truly inclusive global awards program. 

Food has never been more exciting. If I’m honest, my biggest worry if I were to try to reprise my 2019-era role as global best-restaurant arbiter is that the list might need to expand, because food and service and restaurants have gotten so damn good in recent years. But that’s a wonderful problem to have, and it isn’t one that’s properly reflected in the two behemoth awards programs that exist right now. To follow their advice, you might end up eating a very expensive twig rather than engaging with the beautiful, messy, delicious culture right down the street. The world can, and should, do better.