Can't it be a simple case of being the first so widely distributed ?
A quick skimming on Wikipedia shows that of the main guides showed today [1], only one other guide started at the end of the of the 19th century [2]. So probably a good example of the "Land Grab" strategy (from Spolsky, [3]), being the first to grow fast in a new(ish) market. Then they were the reference and that's a easier position to maintain than to grab.
I don't really buy that because its possible that the guide causes people to have high expectations and when they don't have a good experience they might blame circumstance or their own taste rather than the restaurant because the authoritative book couldn't be wrong could it? I was also reading in another article posted in the comments about how receiving a star can be life-changing to restaurants and it forces them to maintain the same level of quality, so the award causes positive feedback.
I had the same reaction when I realized that Guinness, the authority on World Records is the same company that makes the delicious Irish stout. Brilliant marketing.
I think the story was that many pub arguments were about what was the biggest, fastest, most, etc. So Guinness decided to do some research on these records and publish it.
I actually am one of the several hundred people to hold the record for largest hockey game (unless it's been broken recently) and apparently it's quite the racket. Organizations hoping to set records have to go through a lengthy application process, pay an adjudicator to witness the record, etc. Then, if they want it in the Guinness Book (as opposed to just online) they have to pay extra. Record holders can then pay for an official certificate so they can show their friends and family (which of course I did).
Sorry for the wild tangent by the way. I now realize this has nothing to do with Michelin or restaurants.
Ha! I didn't realize that one was the same company either! From now on, I guess I'll switch to assuming that anything with the same name is actually the same company, no matter how seemingly unrelated.
I only realized when I watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi [1]. If I remember correctly there is a brief shot of his 5-Star Michelin plaque, which has the company logo on it.
I went through a there and back again association with the relationship.
When I first heard about the guide, I was pretty close to my guess about the tire company putting out the guide for travelers.
Then I kept hearing about so and so got another MEE-sha-lawn star. This is from people who would pronounce the tires as MISH-a-lin and Porche as "porch". So thought that they must be separate. What with the fancy French pronunciation of their name.
Not too long after I saw one of the guides from pre-WWII and realized that I was right from the beginning. I still catch myself saying MEE-sha-lawn and laugh to myself.
That seems like a somewhat inaccurate takeaway. A few of them "gave them back" because they didn't like the pressure and/or wanted to change their menu. Bourdain of course doesn't care much for them but he was the only one in the article that really took that attitude (and being a rebel is kind of his thing). Other chefs mentioned were devastated to lose them.
There are certainly some misgivings about the organization and process but it seemed like most of them still consider a 3-star to be the top honor in fine dining.
It's really a mixed bag. Michelin favors a certain type of place -- posh, traditional, French -- and doesn't know what to do with other cuisines. This could be OK if you are in France, or if you share that taste, but it doesn't translate well and doesn't serve many diners well.
"Michelin is usually one of the guidebooks I take with me when I visit France, although I tend not to use it much. In Paris, Patricia Wells and the Pudlo guide are better at pointing me to the kind of restaurants I like best; in the rest of the country, I prefer Gault Millau. Outside France, Michelin is all but useless — in most of Italy, you could probably find better restaurants by sticking a pin into a map than you could by following the guide, and while Gordon Ramsay’s supremely boring London flagship gets three stars, Fergus Henderson’s splendid St. John, a restaurant that visiting chefs head off to the second they land at Heathrow, has none."
The blog article had lots of nice historical images, but I think it missed 2/3 of the story: Michelin also made green guides with tourist information and highly accurate maps. The tourist guides were some of the first and cover pretty much every single place of interest in France (from natural attractions to cultural and historical monuments--chateaux and country churches). The maps are some of the most readable and complete in my experience. Thanks to these 2 publications, travelers in France are not at the mercy of the local chambers of commerce and roadside advertising.
I was cooking, fish of all things, in the Picasso restaurant at the Bellagio Hotel, Las Vegas the day it opened. On my third interview the chef, Julian Serrano, said he would hire me but there was a catch, we were in San Francisco and he said that the job would be in Las Vegas. He just signed a 5 year $2M contract. Steve Wynn made clear the purpose of us being there, to make the list of Mobil's 5 star travel guide restaurants which there were only 25 or so at the time and none in Las Vegas -- it will still be years before the Michelin Guide came to the United States. The Mobil guide is now Forbes Travel Guide. It might have been AAA Five-Diamond Award but it's been a while and I forget which one is which. One of the requirements is linen napkins and the restaurant Serrano was at in San Francisco, Masa's, would have had them if they could find a laundry service to clean them. Steve Wynn was very serious about that restaurant. He hired Picasso's son, an interior designer, to design the dining room, he purchased $32M in Picasso artwork for the walls, and hired a Spanish chef. We imported whole turbot fish from Europe at $35/lbs that was only 60% usable, the bones and skin were tossed. It had nothing to do with Steve Wynn caring about food. He needed the prestige of five stars. It was something to aspire to. Why are these guides relevant? Because without the Michelin and Mobil travel guides, there is nothing to push these restaurants to aspire towards perfection whatever that is in a completely subjective art. The guides are the goal, the standard.
What is more interesting than this is why all attempts to create a fine dining restaurant in Las Vegas before the Bellagio opened failed.
Michelin's reviews have nearly always been in line with my own tastes. Yelp, not so much. A good portion of Yelp reviews are written by rubes who don't don't know what good food is, tightwads who prefer a low price over quality, and boors who don't understand why a restaurant won't tolerate their embarrassingly bad behavior - enough to significantly botch their accuracy.
Case in point: the person who gave a seafood restaurant in Alaska a bad review because the tilapia "wasn't fresh".
First off, the closest place to Alaska where you can get really fresh tilapia is, like, Louisiana. It's a warm water fish (native to the Mediterranean, if I remember right). Secondly, it's a mass-produced trash fish. This place has wild-caught salmon, halibut, king crab... but nope. The dude orders tilapia, then throws a wobbly because it's not fresh.
On the other hand, I've eaten my share of expensive food at "fine" dining establishments across nyc and have found less then 10% are worth the price (eg. worth going back). The recent one was Maialino in Grammercy. So much wanted to like it but our dinner was disappointing (thankfully the company picked up the tab). Overly salty Fettucini and Sausage and mediocre chicken cutlet.
Yelp reviews are uneven. Sometimes they are done by competent people paying attention, many times they are not. Crowdsourcing has its uses (I use Yelp for some things), but professional opinions definitely have their uses also.
Online crowdsourced reviews in general suffer from self-selection bias. If you have an acceptable meal that is neither outstanding nor terrible, what would drive the average person to review it?
As someone who is not an obsessed foodie but leans in that general direction, Yelp is better than throwing darts (especially if you read some reviews in addition to looking at the ratings) but it's not great. Zagat is still better although there's a lower barrier to reviews than there was.
Yelp is just more mass market and probably skews to more of a young nightlife crowd than I am part of. Given sufficient volume of reviews, I don't find Yelp to be bad but it's not ideal either.
Yelp suffers from the 4 stars problem. In my neighborhood Taco Time, the French Bakery, and a handful of upscale restaurants each average 4 stars on Yelp. So what does a 4 star rating even mean? It obviously has nothing to do with ambiance (Taco Time), or service (Taco Time and the French Bakery), or the food (Taco Time).
So what does 4 starts even mean? And what does it take to get more than 4 starts? Maybe star ratings are all about expectations. My current hypothesis is if customers get what they expect, they reward a restaurant with 4 stars. If the restaurant bests expectations, customers award 4 1/2 stars. This explains why a Taco Time taco nets 4 stars. Customers get what hey expect - a cheap, reasonably good tasting taco, whereas a market down the stream rakes in 4 1/2 stars for making really yummy tasting deli sandwiches.
Honestly, most review apps would do better to just use the Siskel and Ebert system: two thumbs down (avoid), one thumb/up one thumb down (it's okay but nothing special), two thumbs up (it's worth seeking out).
Taste. You can find great reviews online, but the quality of reviews varies drastically. Editorial filtering is very unfashionable these days but IMHO it's better for the majority of consumers, because of Sturgeon's law.
