In the restaurant world, Michelin is a magic phrase — the food world equivalent of receiving a Pulitzer Prize. Getting a Michelin star (or three) changes restaurants and the chefs that run them, forever binding their names together. The arrival of its anonymous inspectors is the major plot point of the movie “Burnt” and the most recent season of “Emily in Paris.”
First published in France in 1900 by the tire company, the Michelin Guide only just began visiting Washington, D.C., in 2016. Some Baltimore restaurant owners want to see inspectors come to Charm City.
“I’m aware of the desire to get Michelin here,” said Chuck Tildon, who chairs the Baltimore Convention and Tourism Board for Visit Baltimore. “We would welcome the conversation.”
While Visit Baltimore isn’t currently working on bringing the guide here, Al Hutchinson, president and CEO of Visit Baltimore, said the local dining scene “offers an experience like no other, deserving of both a Michelin Guide and national accolades.”
“It’s been talked about,” said Alex Smith, founder of the Atlas Restaurant Group, who also sits on the board of Visit Baltimore. “Anything we can do to get Baltimore on the culinary map is a positive thing.”
Being featured in the Michelin Guide wouldn’t just help the city’s restaurants, but could change broader perceptions of Baltimore, said Irena Stein, co-owner of Alma Cocina Latina in Station North. “The city is always perceived as this dark, violent place. I am personally sick of it. We need to really show the sunlight in the city.” She wants city officials to extend the invitation.
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Even if its inspectors came to Baltimore, Stein pointed out that there’s no guarantee that they would deem any of the city’s restaurants star-worthy. But there’s only one way to find out.
If the experiences of several other U.S. cities are any indicator, bringing the Michelin Guide to Baltimore would likely require some cash.
A few years ago, Michelin began accepting “partnership” funds from local tourism boards to offset the high costs of bringing its inspectors to new places. In Florida, local agencies have paid around $1.5 million to bring — and keep — the Michelin Guide to cities in the state, reported The Tampa Bay Times. Cities that didn’t pay didn’t get featured. Restaurants in Tampa, where tourism officials paid “in the ballpark” of $116,000 annually for three years, were eligible, while eateries in St. Petersburg, which didn’t pay, weren’t.
It takes more than just money to get Michelin to a city, though. In an interview with The New York Times, Gwendal Poullennec, international director of the Michelin Guide, said the company’s inspectors “assess the maturity” of a city’s dining scene before coming to town.
But when the guide first came to D.C., “they left off some very important restaurants and it seemed to be more focused on fine dining,” said Tom Sietsema, food critic for The Washington Post. In last year’s guide, inspectors included one restaurant, Reverie, that was actually closed all year due to a fire. That raises questions about “freshness dates,” Sietsema said, and whether the inspectors go to an individual restaurant multiple times, as do most professional food critics in the U.S.
Sietsema also takes issue with some of the cities the guide has included. “Why would they go to Denver, for instance, which is a real head-scratcher,” he said. The Times reported that Annette in Aurora, Colorado, a highly acclaimed eatery with a James Beard Award-winning chef, was left out because they were located 500 feet past the limits of Denver, which paid to bring the guide to their city.
When it comes to geography, the Michelin Guide’s seemingly arbitrary decisions have affected local restaurants as well. The Inn at Little Washington, which won three stars in the Michelin Guide — the highest-possible rating — was included in the guide to the nation’s capital despite being around 70 miles from Washington, D.C. (Cindy Wolf’s Charleston is just around 40 miles from D.C., by my Google Map calculations.)
Whether Michelin agrees to visit or not, Sietsema thinks Baltimore is a fascinating food city that offers good eats at all price points. He name-checked Charleston, which he said offers “some of the most affordable fine dining in the country,” as well as Woodberry Tavern, whose chef, Spike Gjerde, is the city’s sole James Beard Award winner. “You really punch above your weight in Baltimore,” Sietsema said.
He added that the city deserves “any recognition that a big international guide would give them.”
Why, merci.
