A week of AA & Michelin restaurant guides ~ Distilled Chef Hermes

A week of AA & Michelin restaurant guides, distilled.

Posted by Chef Hermes on September 29, 2013 · Comments Off

With this week seeing the release of both AA & Michelin restaurant guides, is it worth a compare & contrast post on the subject?

There has been much said about the two main guides in terms of disappointment; lack of progression in terms of new awards, establishments effectively buying their awards, lack of transparency and so the list goes on. I’ll let you decide which of those are applicable to which restaurant guide.

Most of the backlash seems to concentrate on inspections, & the timeframes surrounding them. With some big names on the move in the previous 12months, it’s always hard to fill somebody elses shoes. Yet several Sous chefs have taken their first head chef role and gathered the plaudits & accolades from the guides, despite the AA’s own website stating:

When a chef holds Three, Four or Five Rosettes and moves from one establishment to another, the award is suspended at the hotel/restaurant they have just left. The award does not follow the chef either.

As both AA & Michelin are equally tight lipped about their procedures it is quite hard to say for certain what exactly happens; I do know, however, that there is a round table discussion about promotions & deletions for the AA restaurant guide’s top 10%, ie 3Rosettes and above. Which happens around end of April / early May, so if you get the flannel of:

You’re a very good two, maybe a three

or,

You’re on the shortlist for three rosettes.

after these dates, then you know it’s bull.

One particular restaurant has come in for some particular flack; Ormer by Shaun Rankin. Open less than 17weeks and has gathered a Michelin star and a decent ranking from The Good Food Guide, absolutely remarkable. And maybe this goes some way to explaining why at least three, one Michelin starred eateries reckon they weren’t inspected this year, everybody was concentrating on places which had changed their chefs.

restaurant guides

Every year I ask a variant of the same question to Simon Numphud (Hotel Services Manager at AA Hotel Services), concerning the AA’s conflict of interest; and I’d also like to make it clear it’s not about me being against the AA making money, just more about transparency. Of course the AA never answer, instead preferring to put their head in the sand. But the tide is turning, chefs are getting fed up & frustrated with them & their glass ceiling, is this the reason this year for so many new 4Rosettes? Is it their way of distinguishing the upper echelons of 3Rosettes from, what is a large contingent of hotels & restaurants which are effectively buying them? What the AA have to realise, is that they’re actually devaluing their own brand, and a time will come where hotels & restaurants just won’t be interested in the Rosette system.

Next is a subject which is loathed in hospitality, but I think has some level of merit; Tripadvisor. Many will mock & scoff when I mention such a website. But I believe that it can actually serves some purpose, and at least one place should have been paying attention to the general feeling that was being post about it. Mallory Court in Warwickshire lost it’s precious Michelin star, despite the recruitment of highly regarded talent in John Footman, and after reading Tripadvisor it’s not hard to see why. I’m not saying take one review, although there is one pretty scathing post on August 31st, but take a general overall consensus.

What getting to the pinnacle of the rosette tree actually means on a bigger scale. Getting 5Rosettes, according to the AA Restaurant guide means:

5Rosettes: The pinnacle, where cooking compares with the best in the world. These restaurants have highly individual voices, exhibit breathtaking culinary skills, and set standards to which others aspire to, yet few achieve.

Now this is an interesting concept by the AA, and the key phase in that sentence is “where cooking compares with the best in the world“. There are several places I would put in that bracket which are 5Rosettes, but again have the AA made a rod for their own back with so many promotions at a 3Rosette level? If you compare the Worlds 100 Best restaurant to the AA’s top bracket, how many would you expect to appear? All of them, half maybe? 1, The Fat Duck at 33. Sadly not even my great hope for inclusion this year in two Michelin starred Sat Bains makes the top 100. Yet there are a smattering of 3Rosette restaurants across the top 100, including the criminally low rated Ledbury (3Rosettes, 2Michelin stars). Yes, I know, in the past I’ve banged on about how the Worlds 50 Best suffers from the lack of transparency as well, but it is just about the best list of global restaurants available. However, what makes the AA’s claim of internationally comparable cuisine is just laughable, their inspectors have minimal international experience (unlike Michelin’s, apparently) & one of the 5Rosette restaurants has rarely veered from the same menu in years, breaking one of the highest core values most chefs hold – seasonality. It should be noted that the AA has now dropped any reference to seasonal food in its descriptions of the Rosette system.

The omissions & additions of both restaurant guides could be debated the day is long, I’m pleased for the likes of Daniel Clifford, Alan Murchison, Chris Staines and others who have achieved their awards naturally, although I do feel slightly despondent that Mr Staines missed out on the star this year. I just hope that Michelin haven’t returned to the ‘Ostend Queen saga‘ (Basically Michelin gave a restaurant, a bib gourmand before it had even opened).

All in all, as I mentioned at the start of the post, it wasn’t a vintage year by any stretch of the imagination for either guide; just for different reasons.