Monthly Mulling💡

Are We Dining in the Dark?: Shining the 'Streetlight' on Michelin Restaurants

Hi👋 Tapan here!

Every time we visit a new city, friends and family quickly tell us about the best places to eat. "You have to go to Junoon in NYC. It has a Michelin star!" they say excitedly. But have you ever thought about what makes a Michelin star so special, and who decides which restaurants get them?

Diving into a binge-session of Food Theorist¹ videos last week, I stumbled upon a revelation: there’s an inherent bias in the Michelin restaurant ratings, leading me to a bold conclusion—you should NOT trust the Michelin stars! 🙅‍♂️

🍴The Michelin Mystique: Unveiling the French Flavor Favoritism

But first, let’s dive into some history. Did you know the journey to becoming the culinary world's gold standard started with... tyres?

Yep, the same folks who brought us the Michelin Man, or the Marshmallow Man, are the masterminds behind the Michelin Guide, your go-to directory for wallet-emptying dining experiences.

Michelin Guide - The Early Vision

That's right, back in 1889, the Michelin brothers, Andre and Edouard, kicked off their tyre company in Clermont-Ferrand, France. With less than 3,000 cars nationwide, they had a bright marketing idea to boost the automobile (and tyre) industry: the Michelin Guide². 

Originally, this guide was the ultimate travel buddy, packed with maps, tyre change tutorials, gas stations, and yes, spots to grab a bite or catch some sleep. It was more than just a booklet; it was a ticket to adventure, encouraging the car owners to hit the road, wear down their tyres, and—oh, look at that—buy more tyres!

From a Tire Company to a Fine Dining Authority

The Michelin Guide was sold for seven francs with the target audience consisting of the rich bourgeoisie car owners in France🤑.

Fast forward to 1926, the guide began to award stars for fine dining establishments, initially marking them only with a single star. Five years later, a hierarchy of zero, one, two, and three stars was introduced, and in 1936, the criteria for the starred rankings were published. These were your Michelin stars!🌟

“Could change the fate of a restaurant” - But should it?

In summary, the Michelin Guide was conceived simply to encourage more motorists to take the road and over time, became a way for the French tyre company to encourage their rich French customers to buy more tyres.

🥗 The Michelin Influence Today 

Today, the Michelin Guide reigns supreme in the global culinary universe. Its stars? A golden ticket for eateries worldwide, turning them into must-visit destinations for foodies. 

Michelin stars act as the North Star in the gastronomic galaxy with people paying upwards of $350 for just a meal. Yes, that’s what an average tasting menu costs in a three-star Michelin restaurant!³

There are 2,817 Michelin-starred spots around the globe⁴. And guess who's leading the star race? France🇫🇷 sitting pretty with 632 stars, followed by Japan, Italy, Germany, and Spain.

France: Cooking up a Michelin star storm!

🤨 Smells a bit like a gourmet conspiracy, doesn't it? The Michelin Guide, with its roots deep in French soil, seems to sprinkle most of its stars close to home. Coincidence? Further, 4 of 5 countries with the most Michelin star restaurants share a boundary with France🇫🇷. Hmmm…

Sure, the Michelin stars will help you find good restaurants in Europe. But that’s not the perception, right? Michelin star is supposed to scream a world-class cuisine! Do these rankings make any sense outside of Europe for the average consumer?

But Tapan, there’s Japan in the top 5!? Sure but a quick peek at the Michelin Guide reveals Japan's two-star and three-star Michelin restaurants with their cuisines. And surprise… surprise! 😂

40% of the top 10 Michelin-starred restaurants in Japan serve French cuisine!

🕵🏼‍♂️ The Star Makers: The Michelin Inspectors Unveiled 

If we're trusting a bunch of “stars” to pick our next wallet-emptying dinner experience, it's only fair we know who's behind the curtain, right? Wrong ❌.

Enter the Michelin Inspectors: these are the folks with the power to make or break a restaurant's reputation, all while keeping their identities a secret. Yes, all the Michelin Inspectors are anonymous.

Before they can hand out stars, these inspectors go through a food boot camp. It starts in France (because, where else?🇫🇷), then spreads out across Europe, and finally, they get to the real deal in their assigned regions, shadowing a seasoned inspector to learn the ropes.

So, then it’s important to understand the regions where these Michelin inspectors are located. Apparently, there are 90 Michelin Inspectors⁵ spread across 3 continents– 15 Michelin Inspectors based in France🇫🇷, 10 in the USA, and the remaining 65 in the rest of the world.

Michelin Inspectors across the globe

🔦 The Streetlight Effect: A Culinary Blind Spot

So, here’s the TL;DR on Michelin star restaurants: It’s a rating awarded by a majority of French🇫🇷 inspectors, who are trained and predominantly based in France🇫🇷, to numerous restaurants within France🇫🇷 and a selection of establishments globally, with the highest accolades often bestowed upon those serving French🇫🇷 cuisine.

There’s a definite pro-France bias in the Michelin rankings and this bias could come from the Streetlight Effect💡

The effect borrows from a joke:

A police officer sees a drunk searching for something under a streetlight. "What have you lost?" the officer asks. 

"My keys", the drunk replies.

 The officer agrees to help look. After a few minutes, the officer asks, "Are you sure you lost them here?" 

The drunk replies, "No, I lost them in the park." 

Incredulous, the officer asks, "Why are we searching here then?!" 

The drunk replies, "It's too dark over there. This is where the light is!”

The streetlight effect (or the drunkard’s search principle) is the tendency to focus on problems, questions, and data for reasons of convenience or availability versus reasons of relevance or importance.

The Streetlight Effect

The French inspectors, trained in Europe and tasked with bestowing Michelin stars, seem to be only focusing on the gleaming tables within their familiar, well-lit streets. 

It's a culinary version of the streetlight effect—searching for the world's best dining experiences where the light shines brightest, but perhaps not where the flavours are the most diverse or innovative.

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted… What is counted may simply be due to convenience, and what is not counted may simply be due to inconvenience.

— William Bruce Cameron

💡 Illuminating the Shadows: Why We Stick to the Light

So, why do we often end up like moths circling the same old streetlight? Here are three reasons:

😌 Convenience is King

First up, convenience. It's like choosing to wear socks with holes because they're already on your feet. Why bother with the effort of finding a new pair if these do the job, right? We stick to what's lit up in front of us because, well, it's easy. 

The path of least resistance isn't always the wrong path, but it is often not the path to enlightenment.

💸 Low Risk, Low Reward

Next, we're all about that low-risk life. We stick to the well-lit paths because the shadows could hide failure, or worse, more work.

Imagine you're Indiana Jones, but instead of searching for lost artefacts, you're rummaging through your couch cushions for the remote. Sure, you might find some spare change, but the glory? Not so much. 

Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that’s where the light is. It has no other choice.

— Noam Chomsky

😱 Fear of the Dark (a.k.a. Unknown)

Imagine, you're in a rut of a job that's going nowhere, in a toxic workplace. Suddenly one day, two options appear:

1. You're offered a new role with a slight increment but within the same company

2. A recruiter slides into your LinkedIn DMs with a job offer that matches your current salary but at a different company.

Which one will you pick? Most people will pick A or B as they are right below the streetlight!🔦

But only a handful will venture out to seek, option C which is to look for a better paycheck in a better workplace.

We search for answers in the wrong place because of the fear of dark.

🚦Navigating Beyond the Beam: A Guide to Dodging the Streetlight Effect

You see the Streetlight Effect quite a lot in real life, where people are focusing on convenient data and easily available information.

Home life significantly affects a child's learning, yet most educational research is conducted in classrooms. Similarly, the anecdotes in many 'NYT Bestselling Books' are often those found at the top of Google search results. Politicians, too, tend to focus on easily measurable data, like GDP growth, instead of addressing qualitative factors, such as reductions in freedom of speech.

So, what can you do about it?

🎯 Start with the Outcome: Keep your eyes on the prize. Make it a habit to check in with your end goal, like a compass guiding you through a forest, to make sure every step is forward—not just where the path is well-lit. Remember, the desired outcome, your lost keys!

🚨 Beware of Supporting Biases: Watch out for the sneaky traps of availability heuristics (our tendency to overestimate the importance of information that's readily available) and confirmation bias (our habit of favouring information that confirms our existing beliefs). These mental shortcuts might feel like shortcuts to success, but they're really detours that keep us circling the same old ground.

🌌 Be Open to Venture into the Dark: Dare to question your usual haunts and habits. When diving into something new, don't just stick to the first page of Google hits or the books everyone else is reading. Look further, dig deeper. Segregate your wandering and efficiency times, wandering is an essential counterbalance to efficiency.

The Streetlight Effect🔦 is a good reminder that to avoid sinking you should opt to explore the iceberg beneath the surface, rather than being content with what’s visible.

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1. This issue of the newsletter was influenced by this video of the Food Theorists. I don’t take credit for the idea of linking Michelin Guide to the Streetlight Effect.

2. The History of Michelin Guide

3. How Much to Dine Out at a Top Michelin-Starred Restaurant

4. Countries with Michelin-starred Restaurants

5. Video here: As you can understand, with the anonymity, it’s difficult to know these inspectors but the folks at ‘Half As Interesting’ did a deep dive of the past archived blogs and anonymous interviews to get a general sense of the location of the Michelin Inspectors.