Zero Stars: Why is a Tire Company Rating Food?
Explicit content warning
02/02/23 • 38 min
When Katy was working in the Bay Area in her early 20s, she would have given the Michelin Guide 3 stars, because those were the restaurants she felt like she had to work to learn about the most innovative and interesting food. How has that changed?
In this last episode of our fourth season, Katy and Rachel dig into the history, the data, and the money behind the Michelin Guide in the U.S. with help from Krishnendu Ray (professor at NYU) and Beth Forrest (professor at the CIA). By the end of the research, Katy and Rachel had very different ratings for the Guide than what their 24-year-old selves would have given it. What about you?
Guests:
Beth Forrest
Krishnendu Ray
Articles mentioned and other resources:
- Florida’s Tourism Board Will Pay Michelin $150,000 to Rate the State’s Restaurants
- Why California Paid Michelin Guide $600,000 to Cover Los Angeles Again
- The Inspection Process
- Michelin Scatters Stars on New York (2005)
- The Fed-Up Chef
- The Untold Truth Of The Michelin Guide
- The High Price of a Michelin Guide: South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand have spent millions to get their own Red guides
- The History of the Michelin Guide
- How Restaurants Get MIchelin Stars: A Brief History of the Michelin Guide
- The Secret Life of an Anonymous Michelin Restaurant Inspector
- Confessions of a Michelin Inspector
When Katy was working in the Bay Area in her early 20s, she would have given the Michelin Guide 3 stars, because those were the restaurants she felt like she had to work to learn about the most innovative and interesting food. How has that changed?
In this last episode of our fourth season, Katy and Rachel dig into the history, the data, and the money behind the Michelin Guide in the U.S. with help from Krishnendu Ray (professor at NYU) and Beth Forrest (professor at the CIA). By the end of the research, Katy and Rachel had very different ratings for the Guide than what their 24-year-old selves would have given it. What about you?
Guests:
Beth Forrest
Krishnendu Ray
Articles mentioned and other resources:
- Florida’s Tourism Board Will Pay Michelin $150,000 to Rate the State’s Restaurants
- Why California Paid Michelin Guide $600,000 to Cover Los Angeles Again
- The Inspection Process
- Michelin Scatters Stars on New York (2005)
- The Fed-Up Chef
- The Untold Truth Of The Michelin Guide
- The High Price of a Michelin Guide: South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand have spent millions to get their own Red guides
- The History of the Michelin Guide
- How Restaurants Get MIchelin Stars: A Brief History of the Michelin Guide
- The Secret Life of an Anonymous Michelin Restaurant Inspector
- Confessions of a Michelin Inspector
Previous Episode
The Brigade System: a conversation w/ Telly Justice & Mike Sheats
Telly Justice and Mike Sheats worked together at Five & Ten in Athens Ga., where Justice worked her way up to chef de cuisine and Sheats was an AM chef. Once they started their own projects, the chefs knew that the strict brigade system, codified by Georges-Auguste Escoffier more than a hundred years ago, wouldn’t be the right fit for their businesses. “In the kitchens that Mike and I came up in, there was not much room for challenging anything,” said Justice. For both Justice and Sheats, the rigidity of the structure left no room for mistakes and little room for being themselves.
Telly is now chef/co-owner of HAGS, a small tasting menu restaurant in New York City “by Queer people for all people,” and Mike, with his wife Shyretha, runs The Plate Sale, a pop-up inspired by community events like plate sales, barbecues, and fish fries in his hometown of Athens.
This conversation was recorded as a chef-to-chef conversation for the Plate Magazine print edition. You can read an edited version of this conversation (and see some awesome pictures!) in their magazine here. But a less edited version of the conversation is here for your listening pleasure.
Guests:
Telly Justice
Press:
- When ‘Sir’ and ‘Ma’am’ Miss the Mark: Restaurants Rethink Gender’s Role in Service
- HAGS Will Be Queer First, and a Restaurant Second
- A First Look at HAGS, New York’s Revolutionary New Queer Fine Dining
Mike Sheats
The Plate Sale | The Crowdfunding Campaign | Instagram | Email
Press:
- Honoring the History of the Plate Sale
- An inside look at The Plate Sale
- Meet Shyretha and Michael Sheats: Founders of The Plate Sale
Resources:
- Understanding Anti-Intellectualism in the U.S. by Studio ATAO
- Anti-Intellectualism int he Restaurant Industry: Why an equitable future requires overhauling the brigade system
- An Investigation in Culinary Life and Professional Identity in Practice during Internship
- Escoffier Kitchen Brigade System Then and Now
- “OUI, CHEF!” A Sociohistorical Analysis of Organizational Culture in the American Fine Dining Kitchen Brigade and its Effects on Health from 1903 to 2019
- Why is anti-intellectualism so popular in kitchens?
Next Episode
It’s Blame the Lunch Worker First and Foremost: Guest Episode from LWC Studios
Less than $2. That’s how much the Santa Ana Unified school district can afford to spend on one student’s lunch each day. The $14 billion budget of the National School Lunch program stretches thin, and school nutrition workers are often the target of kids’ complaints. Reporter Jessica Terrell explores the cultural figure of “the lunch lady,” and how students and workers lose when bureaucrats focus on cost over care.
This episode includes an annotated transcript with links to sources used in the reporting. This podcast was created by editors at The Counter and produced by LWC Studios. It is made possible by grants from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
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