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This story is republished as part of our collaboration with The Food Section.
When I worked at the newspaper in Charleston, readers frequently harumphed that the city’s dining scene couldn’t be all that great because it hadn’t earned any Michelin stars. I had to explain that stars were only doled out in places covered by a Michelin guide, and Charleston wasn’t among them.
Now that’s about to change.
In collaboration with Travel South USA, a conclave of tourism offices in Southern states, Michelin announced it will publish a Michelin Guide American South in 2025. While the guide is Michelin’s first regional guide in North America, the company years ago started partnering with tourism boards to produce guides: Guides added in the last five years include Florida, Texas, and Atlanta.
Atlanta will be folded into the new American South guide, along with Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
Honestly, I can’t recall the last press release that sparked so much culinary chatter. To put the news in perspective, I rang up Michael Ian Fanning, one of my readers who always knew precisely how Michelin worked. After all, Fanning, now based in Charlotte, was instrumental in bringing the guide to this country. We started our conversation there.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Tell me about where your relationship with Michelin began.
Sure. I worked for Michelin for 16 years. I was corporate vice president in charge of public affairs and communications until 2011, and then I became chief sustainability officer for Michelin Group. I retired at the end of 2016.
So, you were in the communications position when the first U.S. Guide was released?
Yeah, I think it was 2005; I remember getting a call from the chairman and president of Michelin North America, and he said, ‘Expect a call from the head of the guide.” His name was Jean-Luc Naret. Jean-Luc had been brought on board by Michelin because the guide had been very successful globally, but not yet anywhere in North America.
At that time, did most Americans have any grasp of what Michelin was? Were they consulting the guides when they traveled abroad?
It’s interesting. I would say there was a certain class of people that knew Michelin very well, both as a tire company and as the company that produced the guides. But I would run into people who had no earthly idea that the guide was associated with the tire company.
One of the first things that I did was I took a tour around New York City with Jean-Luc, meeting restaurateurs, meeting with different publications, and just saying, ‘If Michelin were to come, what would you think about it? How would it be received?” I think there was a lot of hope.
I imagine back then, even though Michelin was based in Greenville, Michelin wasn’t thinking about creating a guide there.
No, it was not going to be in Greenville, South Carolina. It was going to be in New York City, Chicago, eventually Los Angeles, eventually Las Vegas, and later, Washington, D.C.
It takes a lot of investment. I mean, just think about what’s involved in getting somebody who is going to be a good Michelin inspector, making sure they have the proper training, and sending them to restaurants anonymously so they can gather information.
The thing that distinguishes Michelin is there are repeated visits. Not a starred restaurant, but just to be included in the guide, [the restaurant] goes through a very rigorous inspection. If you’re going to be a starred restaurant, that requires more repeat visits; they even inspect the kitchen.
At that point, I guess they’re no longer anonymous.
Correct.
Was there a discussion at the outset as to whether the inspectors would be drawn from American ranks or if Michelin would bring over the ones who’d been doing it in Europe?
It was a combination. What’s interesting is that the global standard for a restaurant is the same. If you get a star in New York City, or you get a star in Bangkok, or a star in Paris, all of those are equal. There’s no grading curve.
Got it. Tell me about the release of the first guide.
On the eve of its launch, Jean-Luc came to me and said, ‘Michael, I’m a Frenchman. I don’t have a line for reporters.’ So, I came back to him a day later and said, ‘OK, Jean-Luc, you say, ‘Being an inspector for the Michelin Guide is sort of like being in the witness protection program—only the food is much better.’ Jean-Luc was pretty good because he knew he had to hit that pause.
We did the launch at a museum in New York, and we had Martha Stewart there. The chefs were really excited. It was very well received by the chef community.
But there were perhaps some publications, I’m thinking of the New York Times, that felt like, ‘Hey, we’re king of the hill in terms of restaurant reviewing. Do we really need Michelin barking up our tree?’
There was a dining reporter, Florence Fabricant, and she was a little snarky about the launch of Michelin Guide, to be perfectly honest. But over time, because Michelin would update the guide every year, it became an established guide that people respected, [including] publications that had devoted themselves to reviewing. It kind of upped everyone’s game, let’s put it that way.
Except now, there really is no one reviewing. I mean, the Times still does it, but in all the states that they’ve chosen for this guide, very few of them have publications with restaurant critics on staff.
Yeah, that’s interesting. Reviewing now has taken to the internet, and anybody can post a review. So, where do you find a trusted guide on which you can really depend? When Michelin launched the guide in 1900, they thought it would last a century. And here we are into the second century of its existence. It has the trust of chefs and the trust of consumers, and I think that’s what sets it apart.
As you’ve watched them expand into markets that were potentially inconceivable when the first guide came out in this country, what have you seen happen in those markets?
The guide has always been a success. Although when they launched a Las Vegas-slash-Los Angeles guide, it did not do well. Eventually, that guide was shuttered. But aside from that, the major city launches of which I was a part were always deemed a really great success.
Now, I know that Michelin has changed its methodology in terms of how it finances the guide, because it’s working with local tourist organizations to help with the development costs. So, the question that would arise would be, ‘Can you retain your objectivity?’ Michelin would say—and I would argue that it’s true—that we are not going to compromise our values simply because we’re getting help from a tourist organization.
Did the dual Las Vegas guide fail because of that setup or because of the markets it covered?
I think it was the market. L.A. is very well known for its street foods; I don’t know how well it’s known for the type of dining that is popular in, say, New York or Chicago. And Las Vegas was really interesting because many of the starred French chefs had outposts in Las Vegas. But most people don’t go to Las Vegas for the eats.
Right, right. I don’t know if you can shed any light on the logistics of covering an area as big as the American South.
I was quite frankly stunned at the girth of the announcement. I have been speaking with a couple of chefs at The Umstead: Steven Devereaux Greene and his sous chef, Spencer Thomson. They alerted me probably a year ago that the Michelin Guide was coming to North Carolina; they were very instrumental working with a local tourism group.
I only mention that because I thought it might be North and South Carolina in a combined Carolinas guide. And when I saw the announcement today of the widespread nature of the different cities, I thought, ‘My God, that is a lot of investment in time and effort to get all those restaurants categorized, selected, and put in the guide.’
Now that we all know it’s coming, what would you advise restaurant owners and consumers to expect?
I would say restaurants should continue to do what they do best. The thing what’s sometimes misunderstood about Michelin is some people think to be in the guide, you’ve got to have fine linen, great cutlery, service that is unparalleled. And the truth is, what’s on the plate is what really concerns Michelin.
They’ve made a lot of innovations over the years. One of them is a category called Bib Gourmand. You can go to a restaurant that is designated as a Bib, and you know that you’re going to get a great meal—perhaps with a main course, a glass of wine, and dessert—and you can get away at a reasonable sum.
As a matter of fact, when the New York guide was launched, the American team came up with a notion of putting out the Bib Gourmand listings prior to the starred listings, because we found that if you focus simply on the stars, it really does a disservice to the reader, because a lot of folks will focus on stars. Whereas just simply being in the guide is recognition.
“Some people think to be in the guide, you’ve got to have fine linen, great cutlery, service that is unparalleled. And the truth is, what’s on the plate is what really concerns Michelin.”
I got a message this morning from a writer in Asheville saying, ‘Oh my goodness, if we could only have a Michelin star, it would make such a difference in our recovery.’ For the cities which put up money for the guide, will there be real economic and promotional consequences? Would it help Asheville to get a star?
I would go further than that. Even if Asheville doesn’t get a star, I think the mere appearance of certain Asheville area restaurants in the Michelin guide would augur success. Just being in the guide tends to raise everyone’s boats.
Relatedly, do you have any insider understanding as to why they did not include the state of Georgia beyond Atlanta? I imagine if I was a chef in Savannah, I’d be a little annoyed.
Oh, I see what you’re saying. I hadn’t thought about that, but that’s a very good point.
Because if you’re outside the guide’s stated coverage area, there’s no way you can just set up a pop-up stand where the inspectors are. Although I suppose chefs do move around these days—which could make the situation even worse for Savannah.
Here’s an aside for you: Did you know that on D-Day, some U.S. servicemen were carrying Michelin Guide 1939 in their backpacks?
No, I didn’t.
Well, here’s the deal. The U.S. War Department knew the Germans would be tearing down street signs throughout France. So, they got permission from Michelin to reprint the guide because they saw Michelin as having the best maps to France. Many, many servicemen, when they hit the beach at Normandy, had the entire 1939 guide.
Wow. So, if they wanted to, on a cold and lonely night, they could read through the descriptions of what they might’ve seen if they’d gotten there sooner.
Yeah, they could dream.
They could dream. Well, that’s what Michelin’s all about, right?
Right.
Hanna Raskin is editor and publisher of The Food Section, a newsletter covering food and drink across the South. You can reach her at hanna@theassemblync.com.