French Lessons

by Peter Mayle

  One of the reasons the guide has managed to retain its virtue as well as its authority is the self-imposed ban on advertising that is now in its eighty-first year. Thanks to that ban, the guide contains none of the corporate graffiti that decorates almost everything we watch or read. I can think of hundreds of companies that would fall over themselves to advertise in the guide’s closely studied pages: anyone selling food, drink, travel, kitchen equipment, cars, indigestion remedies, wonder diets—the list is long, and potentially very, very lucrative. The Michelin people could make a fortune. It does them credit that they prefer to maintain their independence and keep the guide commercial-free.

  But the real strength of the guide is its system of restaurant evaluation, and the mysterious band of men and women who work within that system. These are the inspectors, les incognitos, whose names are never announced, whose photographs are never taken, and whose considerable talents are only recognized by a few souls of discretion in the Michelin head office.

  The inspectors’ method of working is a complete contradiction of the tactics normally practiced by food critics, who, with one or two exceptions, know more about self-promotion than cooking. Most food critics, I suspect, want to be known, to be recognized, to be stroked, to feel that their names send a frisson of apprehension up and down the chef’s spine. A measure of celebrity, and the special attention it generates, is what they like when they eat. And restaurants should behave accordingly, if they know what’s good for them. Waiters, many waiters, should flurry around. New off-menu dishes should be sent to the table for sampling. Chefs should drop by at the end of the meal to give away recipe secrets that will be published in the eventual review as the critic’s own expert and perceptive discoveries. “To my surprise, I detected a daring but successful touch of truffled apricots in the galantine of pork.” That sort of thing.

  In contrast, the Michelin inspector’s approach to a restaurant is the same as that of any normal customer. When he makes his reservation, his name doesn’t ring any bells in the kitchen. (Even France’s highly tuned network of gossip among chefs hasn’t yet managed to identify inspectors, for reasons we shall come to later.) When the inspector arrives at the restaurant, he continues to make himself unknown. He doesn’t ask for any particular table. He doesn’t drop any hints to the headwaiter. He doesn’t demand to meet the chef. He eats, he drinks, he pays his bill, and he leaves. And nobody in the restaurant, or the kitchen, is any the wiser.

  There are people—my friend Régis, the glutton in chief, is one—who will tell you that eating for a living is as close as one can reasonably come to heaven on earth. He thinks he would love to be a Michelin inspector. And on the face of it, a career of being fed and watered by some of the world’s best cooks does sound more attractive than chartered accountancy or commodities trading or, indeed, most other jobs. But is it? Does our inspector spring from his bed salivating every morning? Does he have a remedy for the gourmet’s occupational ailment, the crise de foie? Where does he eat on his days off? Is he fat? I thought it would be fascinating to find out. And since I didn’t know an inspector, or anybody who knew one, I decided that the only place to go for enlightenment was to taste bud headquarters, the Michelin office in Paris.

  It is on the wide and leafy avenue de Breteuil in the seventh arrondissement, a ten-minute stroll from my favorite food shop, the Bon Marché Grande Epicerie on the rue du Bac. The Michelin building is set back from the street, functional and unremarkable, guarded by a sentry box where visitors are required to state their business before being allowed in. My appointment was with Monsieur Arnaud, one of whose burdens in life it is to deal with nosy interlopers like myself.

  He met me in the reception area, a dark-haired, distinguished man with a diplomatic air, and led me through a labyrinth of corridors to a small book-lined office. He gave me a shot of triple-strength coffee before asking how he could help.

  “I’m fascinated by your team of inspectors,” I said.

  He nodded amiably. I had the feeling this wasn’t the first time he’d heard that.

  “And what I’d really like is to have lunch with one of them.”

  The Arnaud eyebrows went up. The Arnaud lips were pursed. “That, I’m afraid, would be very difficult.”

  “How about dinner?”

  He smiled and shook his head. I didn’t think it was worth suggesting breakfast.

  “The problem is,” Arnaud said, “that our inspectors must remain anonymous if they are to do their job properly.”

  I told him I had no wish to blow an inspector’s cover, but Arnaud remained adamant—polite, friendly, understanding, but adamant. It couldn’t be done. And then he explained why.

  Inspecting restaurants for Michelin is not an occasional diversion for people with an educated palate who like to eat, but a full-time, long-term, salaried career. Inspectors have usually had eight to ten years of experience working in the hotel or restaurant business—“a basic education,” Arnaud called it—before joining Michelin. Then there is a training period of two years before they go out on the road to eat in earnest.

  And when they do go out on the road, they’re kept hard at it, weekends included: two meals a day, but never at the same type of restaurant, so that a two-star lunch may be followed by dinner in a bistro. During a typical week, inspectors will sample ten to fourteen kinds of cuisine. Two weeks of this, and then they will go back to Paris to write their reports. To make sure their faces don’t become familiar in one particular area, they constantly switch regions, traveling about twenty thousand miles a year. Every starred restaurant will be visited and reviewed half a dozen times in the course of a year by different inspectors.

  Reeling from this barrage of information, I asked what I thought was a harmless question. “How many inspectors are there?”

  Another enigmatic smile. I was trying to venture into forbidden territory. “Un certain nombre,” said Arnaud. “Enough to do the work.”

  “And what do you look for in an inspector?”

  “Discretion, both in manner and appearance. We don’t want anyone flamboyant, or too distinctive. We look for Monsieur Tout le Monde, Mr. Everyman.”

  That puts Régis out of the running, I thought. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been swirling through the village in a calf-length Tyrolean cloak, basketball boots, and a wide-brim Borsalino fedora, his cigar belching chimney-sized puffs of smoke. He is not the most unobtrusive of men.

  Arnaud continued. “Inspectors must, of course, be physically sound. They must have an exceptional sense of taste, and this must be educated enough to recognize if a chef has taken shortcuts. Or worse”—Arnaud’s expression became grave—“if he has been cheating.” He paused to let this horror sink in. “Disguised dishes,” he said. “Cod masquerading as another fish under the cover of a distracting sauce. Mutton dressed up as lamb. These things happen. Our man must be watchful. He must be able to see through the disguise without having to question the chef. One can never question the chef, because this is un métier très discret.”

  Discretion was a recurring theme, and indeed Arnaud himself was proving to be as discreet as an oyster, although he did open up a little when we talked about female inspectors. They often notice details, he said, that men overlook. Only the other day he had been to lunch at a starred restaurant with a female inspector colleague, Madame Tout le Monde. He had found everything as it should be. Madame hadn’t. She had noticed that one of the waiters had fingernails that were, shall we say, not quite comme il faut, not quite in the state of blanched and spotless, buffed perfection that they should be. Not the worst of crimes perhaps; not enough to strip away the stars. But a black mark nevertheless, and something that would be on the checklist for the next inspector.

  There was no point, I knew, in asking what inspectors said about their work to their friends. Presumably they couldn’t admit the truth. Was there an approved Michelin cover story, backed up by a fake office and a secretary trained in the arts of espionage? Did the husbands
and wives of inspectors know? What did they tell their friends? How did inspectors describe their occupation in the endless forms that one is required to fill out in France? The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like life in the witness protection program, but with better food.

  I left the Michelin building a wiser man, any illusions I might have had about the joys of eating for a living dispelled. An inspector’s life was not for me. In fact, it sounded like a constant nightmare of self-restraint. There he is, our friend Monsieur Tout le Monde, cast adrift every lunchtime in a sea of temptation—exquisite food, fifty-page wine lists thick with cobwebbed treasures, deferential service, comfortable surroundings, no pressing appointments except dinner that evening—there he is, at the very pinnacle of civilized refreshment, and what does duty require him to do? Hold back. Concentrate. Take mental notes. Check the waiter’s fingernails. Keep a sharp eye out for disguised dishes. Work.

  Even when I was in the advertising business during those palmy days when the industry motto was “Let’s have lunch!” and the road to success was strewn with menus, I was never able to come to terms with the working lunch. For me, work and lunch are two activities that were never meant to coexist and should never be forced to do so. Lunch is—or it should be—a pleasure. The wine and conversation should flow; the chef’s efforts should be given the attention they deserve. Enjoyment should reign. How can this possibly happen if one is expected to discuss sales and distribution plans or the latest surgings and plummetings of the stock market, or even if, as with Monsieur Tout le Monde, lunch is something to be analyzed, dissected, judged, and pigeonholed? It flies in the face of nature. But although I could never do that, I am profoundly grateful to those who can, because they have labored long and hard to produce the definitive bible of the belly.

  There are, of course, many other food guides besides the Michelin. Some are good, some are cobbled together by enthusiastic amateurs, and some are not much more than vehicles for liquor advertising. None of them can match the Michelin recipe of impartiality, scope, professional attention to detail, and accuracy. (The town maps in the 1939 guide were so accurate they were used by the Allied forces in 1944 during the liberation of France.) And no other guide is as popular.

  For once, this is not just my own highly subjective opinion. Statistics are on my side. Le Guide Rouge 2000 had a first printing of 880,254 individually numbered copies, an enormous print run for a hardcover book. It was an immediate best-seller. As I write this, I have my copy (number 304,479) in front of me. It is a cheerfully colored, reassuringly plump volume that makes its ancestor from 1900 look undernourished, even anorexic. This year, there are more than seventeen hundred pages, listing more than five thousand hotels and more than four thousand restaurants. Adding to the volume’s bulk is a Michelin novelty: For the first time in a hundred years, the sign language for each listing is amplified by descriptive text—a couple of sentences, no more. But we can imagine the months, perhaps years, of judicious pondering over at taste bud headquarters before the decision was taken to add words to pictograms, because one doesn’t tamper lightly with an institution.

  My only reservation about the guide is the effect it sometimes has on restaurants. I believe it tends to bring out the interior decorator that can occasionally be found lurking in the subconscious of some otherwise-levelheaded chefs. Let a star be awarded, and suddenly amid all the celebrations and cries of hail to the chef, through the joyous mist of champagne bubbles, the proprietor glances fondly around the restaurant and notices that there’s … something wrong. It is, he eventually realizes, the look of the place: the furniture, the accessories, the overall style of the room. They just won’t do anymore. They’re too … well, too ordinary for an establishment that has now been elevated to the gastronomic heights. The restaurant has a macaroon, for heaven’s sake. Haute cuisine deserves nothing less than haut décor. There’s nothing for it but to call in the refurbisher.

  And so those old, simple chairs are replaced by high-backed thrones covered in thick-cut, sumptuous bas-relief tapestry that costs more per square meter than foie gras. As for those serviceable plates and glasses, those unremarkable knives and forks, they must go, too. Bring on the Limoges and the Baccarat and the cutlery that looks as though it has come straight out of the presidential dining room in the Elysée Palace. Soon there is fine linen for the tables, silver-topped crystal decanters for the wine, great shiny domes to protect the food during its brief journey from kitchen to customer. And finally, let’s smarten up the staff by putting them in new outfits—something sleek and chic and, more often than not, black.

  This is all well and good if it stops there; a face-lift, nothing more. Alas, there are times when it changes not just the appearance of the restaurant but its personality, as well. Eminence breeds reverence, and what was once a comfortable, easygoing place becomes, in that ominous and overused phrase, a temple of gastronomy. A shrine. Not only that, the investment required for thrones and domes and decanters and designer plates is colossal, which puts severe additional pressure on the poor man in the kitchen whose cooking has to pay for it all.

  I’ve wondered many times over the years why an accolade for excellent cooking should lead to a frenzy of redecoration, and not long ago I had the chance to ask a local chef about it. He has recently been attracting a lot of well-deserved attention; his food is terrific, and his restaurant is delightful. It won’t be long before he gets his first star. I think he sees it as a mixed blessing.

  Of course, he would be thrilled. For a chef, Michelin stars are the stuff of dreams. But certain improvements would have to be made, he said as we looked around the room where I have spent many happy and well-fed hours—a friendly room, where you feel at home as soon as you sit down.

  “Why change anything?” I said.

  He shrugged. “Customers expect it. What can I do?”

  Then I understood. It wasn’t an edict handed down by Michelin. It wasn’t the chef’s desire to improve his working scenery. This whole thing—the summoning of the refurbisher, the Elysée Palace cutlery, the new ensembles for the staff—is all done to satisfy a deeply felt need in the French psyche that I’ve noticed before: the passion for trappings, the love of luxe. Who knows how it began? It might well have been started by the courtiers at Versailles, who were always trying to keep up with each other in the matter of velveteen breeches, scented gloves, hand-knitted wigs, and other items of conspicuous consumption. In any case, it was subsequently adopted with tremendous gusto by the prosperous members of the bourgeoisie, the kind of people who today buy La Cornue stoves and Hermès picnic baskets; the kind of people who have the money and the inclination to eat out frequently; the kind of people, in other words, who make restaurants successful and profitable.

  They insist on their comforts, according to my friend the chef, and you will never hear them complain about a surfeit of upholstery, an excess of crystal, or too many waiters. In fact, as he said, that is what they expect from a restaurant when it has reached a certain level. A little pomp is necessary. The food is crucial, certainly, but so are the surroundings. Success in the kitchen must be reflected by the trappings of success in the dining room. Otherwise, apparently, customers will feel let down. Or even worse, some of the more sensitive among them might have the terrible suspicion that they’re paying one-star prices to eat in a homely old bistro.

  It’s a difficult, demanding business running a top restaurant, and one that requires a particular mixture of talents. Part artist, part sergeant major, part diplomat—the great chefs have to be all of these, and they can’t afford to have off days, because someone—possibly Monsieur Tout le Monde himself—will be watching. France’s longest-serving three-star chef, Paul Bocuse, received his stars back in 1965, and he still has them today. Thirty-five years without putting a foot wrong in the kitchen. The man deserves a medal for stamina.

  And so do some of the other veterans. Looking through the pages of the 2000 edition, you will find 116 establishments that
were recommended in the original guide a hundred years ago. One of these monuments happens to be the Hotel d’Europe in Avignon, not far from us, and we thought it would be interesting to see how it was holding up under the weight of all those years.

  In fact, the hotel was doing brisk business long before the Michelin brothers discovered it. Built in the sixteenth century, it was acquired by a widow, Madame Pierron, who opened her doors to travelers in 1799. Bigwigs of every description came to stay: cardinals and archbishops, princes and statesmen, even Napoléon Bonaparte. History doesn’t relate whether Josephine came, too, but it seems he had fond memories of the place. When he was fighting in Russia, surrounded by officers complaining about the discomforts of war, he showed little sympathy. “Sacrebleu!” he is reported to have said. “We’re not at Madame Pierron’s hotel.”

  He would have no difficulty recognizing it today. It’s on one of the prettiest squares in Avignon, the place Crillon, just inside the ramparts that have protected the center of town for six hundred years. The classical architecture of the place has survived without too much interference from town planners, the street is still cobbled, and the hotel’s handsome facade remains simple, without any of the neon trimmings that disfigure so many old buildings.

  After passing through an entrance wide and high enough for a coach and horses, we found ourselves in a huge paved courtyard. There were trees, flowers, a fountain, and a smiling manager at the door. Already, I could see why Napoléon liked staying here. He would have liked our room, too, with its view across tiled rooftops toward the floodlit Palais des Papes. And he would undoubtedly have liked the cooking.

  We sat over a long dinner, made longer by the generosity of the chef. He has one Michelin star, and he is pursuing a second with an enthusiasm that spilled over onto our plates. We ordered three courses and ended up tasting six—only tasting, because the three extra surprises were no more than a couple of perfectly presented mouthfuls, just enough to keep the palate sharp without blunting the appetite. It was the next best thing to being invited into the kitchen.