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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles to be Chuck, bright and clear. He's out there lurking like an Internet weirdo and this is stuff you should know. Yeah, I got a question for you. OK, you ever been to a Michelin starred restaurant? Yes.

I don't know if I have or not. Surely you have. I don't know. I mean, I've never sought one out. Sure. But I may have accidentally done it. Yeah, it's possible. There's there's a decent there's enough one star restaurant out there that it's entirely possible.

You've been to one one star. Actually, I've been to a three three star restaurant once. Yes. Was for a very special occasion, you and my engagement. I contacted our friend Hodgeman, who was kind enough to contact his friend Adam Sachs, who was a restaurant critic who pulled some strings to get me reservations. That Danielle in New York City, and it was a three star restaurant. It was amazing. It was just totally amazing. Yeah, I think.

I mean, I went to Atlanta is not on, and you'll you know, we'll go over all this in this episode, but Atlanta is not covered under the Michelin Guide. Right. But she explains why Bacchanalia doesn't have a star. Yeah. Bacchanalia or Staple House.

I could see having a star. I haven't been there. Staple House is the best meal I've ever had in my life. What kind of food? It's a tasting menu. Just like, you know, things mostly, yeah, things rib's other things, you can taste pretty good.

It's very renowned in Atlanta and around the world, like people fly to Atlanta to get a stable house, huh?

It's that good. And it's it's really something else. It's the best meal I've ever had. And from the food to the service and the ambiance, it was just it's a five star night, regardless of what Michelin says. That's what my Yelp review is.

But doesn't that say everything about Michelin that the highest honor you can get is three stars? It's like everybody else is going for five. Michelin is like three tops, you know.

Yeah, but as you'll see, this was their star rating came out long before the Internet existed. Exactly.

And so you you might be like Michelin. I've never heard of that guy, but there's a tire company called Michelin out there. And we are here to tell you that they are one in the same company, that the tire manufacturer is also the publisher of the world's most renowned restaurant guide of all time. Yeah.

And once we explain it, it's like it's one of those things that at the same time you say, oh, well, now I guess it makes sense, but also still very weird. It is. But it's literally the Michelin Man. It's is part of this guy. Yeah. There's tire cartoon tirman.

If you're like, oh, you know, this is pretty hearty stuff. No one of their is the Michelin Man licking his lips, making the oxenbould. So let's all maintain a little bit of perspective here, OK? Yeah, absolutely.

So so with the with the the connection to the tire company, I think it's a pretty satisfying explanation. But all the way back in, what was it, the 19th century for sure, I believe 1889, Andre and Eduard Michelin started making tires. And this is you know, they're making bicycle tires, I believe, at first, but they ended up making tires for just about everything, including trains.

I did not know that there were procedures for trains, but yeah, like rubber tires, rubber tires for trains. Just had no idea that that ever existed. Maybe was one of those things where they tried it and it failed spectacularly. But it's still worth remarking. I don't know if they're still around or not, but these guys started making tires at a really good time because around that time, in addition to bikes, you also started to need tires for your car.

And the Micheline brothers were there for it. Apparently, France was like one of the early hot spots of the auto manufacturing world around the turn of the last century.

Yeah, they built more cars than anyone else between 1890 and sort of the mid to late 1940s. And they sold a ton of tires. And the Michelin Man himself debuted in 1898, which is pretty remarkable. And there was I think it was Dave Ru's, right? Yeah, I believe so, yeah.

Dave can point you in if you're in a place where you can look this up on the Internet, just type in Babinda. Bybee and um, which was the original name of the Michelin Man, which comes from a Latin tost attributed to Horace Nons. S Babinda, now is the time to drink and just look up the poster type in Buchbinder poster 1898, and you'll see what is exactly a very creepy poster of an early Michelin tire man. It's it is very creepy and sort of like it is.

It's like what is wrong with all the people at the table. There's something terribly wrong with everybody. But apparently Bentham is still his name in Europe or BEB. Yeah, affectionately. But so the Debenham debuted a little actually before the time of the guide. The guide first made its appearance in nineteen hundred. And the reason why the guy never existed as far as the Michelin company's concerned is because they're the Michelin brothers were looking for a way to to sell more tires by getting people to drive more.

And they figured, well, if we make a guidebook saying, hey, you got to check out this place in Liohn or Burgundy or champagne or sparkling wine like all these different places in France, then they'll actually go out and take road trips to these places. And that was the origin of the Michelin guide, was to tell people about all these different spots and to make, you know, to let you know about them. I mean, maybe you should go check this out.

Yeah. So it was first given away for free when it debuted. They like he said, we're just sort of listing restaurants where you could go, but. Eventually, in nineteen twenty six, they started recommending restaurants and in nineteen thirty one is where the star system was finally debuted, which is one star, a very good restaurant in its category two stars. Excellent cooking, worth a detour or three stars, exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey. And I really think they missed a big opportunity by not reading these one to four tires.

Instead, they did one to three stars. But as Dave points out, if you'll notice, what they're saying is, hey, this restaurant, you should really drive to your Michelin tires a lot, right?

Yeah. Maybe lay some rubber and do some doughnuts on the way. Totally. So that language is still in use today. Like those are the current explanation for stars as well, even though the point isn't to get you to use up your tires. Probably, but they do still signify the same thing where like a three star restaurant to the to the Michelin, the editors of the Michelin guide is it's worth a trip in and of itself, like it's worth getting in a plane and flying to a different country to eat this meal at this restaurant and then getting on a plane and flying back.

That's basically what a three star Michelin rating means.

That's right. The first one outside of France was in Belgium in 1984. And then it kind of spread through Europe with other guides, North Africa. They did publish an English language version in nineteen nine, but it was just for France. Still, America didn't get its first guide. And this is very surprising to me until 2005 when they started their guide to New York City because, you know, they were like the only good food in America is in New York.

Yeah, yeah. And not only that, only good French restaurants are are what is in New York, in New York to America. You know, they took a lot of flack for that first one in its defense. They didn't they hadn't put together a team of American inspectors. They had they had used some of their existing European inspectors to go over. And they have no idea what they're doing aside from French cuisine, apparently. So they did just basically put an American guidebook out to the best French restaurants in New York.

That was the first American guide. But they have since, as we'll see, like really kind of kept pace a lot more since then.

Yeah, they've tried to. The modern guide has more than forty thousand restaurants in 34 countries. Here in the States, you have New York. They cover the state of California and then the cities of Chicago and Washington, D.C. And that's all as far as the U.S. goes so far. And they sell these things now. They sold they've sold 30 million of them over the last hundred years. And then next year they are going to hit Moscow. They have them for Tokyo, Hong Kong, sort of other places all over the world now, like you said, because they're trying to, I think, shed and we'll talk more about this, but shed a little bit more of that stodgy, snooty only French kind of thing.

Right.

Which is why they're releasing a guidebook on Topeka next year as well. Oh, great. So if you if you open up one of these Michelin guides or go online, it's all online as well, too. When you when you hear about three stars, like there must be, you know, a tremendous amount of detail explaining why and all that. That is not how Michelin guides work. There is a tremendous amount of work and effort and thought that's put into the kind of rating or symbol that a restaurant gets in the Michelin guide.

But the guide itself is basically like, just trust us. Here's one star or two stars or three stars or no stars. Here's a little write up about the restaurant, what you can expect the chef and what the chefs known for. And in a couple of paragraphs, the they make or break a restaurant around the world.

Yeah. And they have it's very I mean, if you don't know anything about it and you just pop it open like you said, you could get confused by all the weird symbols that it uses to convey their qualities. We'll get into some of those in a minute. But the star is, you know, obviously the highest honor you can get. The criteria. There are five criteria to judge these restaurants for stars. It's not it's only about the food.

It's not the decor. It's not the service or the ambience or where it is. It's literally just the food on the plate. And these five criteria, which are quality of the ingredients, mastery of flavor and the cooking techniques, personality of the chef, the harmony of flavors, and then the consistency between the visits.

I also saw value for money. Is that not one I didn't. See that anywhere except in this thing that we were given, did you see that elsewhere? No, I saw that that would make much more sense for the Garamond, which we'll talk about.

Yeah, I mean, this was taken I got mine from an interview with an actual New Yorker one, OK. Yeah, I missed that part. So when you put all those criteria together and again, like you said, it's just they're just talking about the food, but they're talking about the food to the point where a three star rating means that that restaurant puts out consistently over time technically, scientifically perfect food. Hmm. No matter what you order and no matter what time of day, no matter what day of the year, no matter who you are, you're going to go in and get a perfect meal every time.

That's what a three star rating is. And there's a lot of criticism of those criteria, as we'll see.

But it really is a a remarkable, a remarkable thing that they're they're basically saying, like, this is a perfect meal no matter what you order. That's that's kind of hard to find in other industries. You're not just like like, you know, this is a this is a perfect cube that I'm wearing. You know, it's this this is weird, you know, five boxes of criteria that are being checked off no matter what what shoe model shoe, the shoe is going to be perfect no matter what.

You don't find that everywhere else, you know. No, I really love that symbol or that analogy. Thank you. So there are only one hundred and twenty eight, three stars worldwide. There are four hundred and fifty nine to stars and twenty two thousand four hundred and eighty six one star restaurants.

A man, very famous man chef name Alain de Kaza. How do you pronounce that. I think it's elegant. Yes.

I think there's so much French in here that I'm going to murder. But he has the he has thirty six restaurants and between them twenty Michelin stars, including three three star restaurants, which is quite an accomplishment. And I think we should take a break maybe. And then we'll talk about some of those more weird symbols in the guide. That's some good lalala.

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Oh. So the Michelin guide is most well-known for the stars that it gives, right, and we should say even being mentioned in the Michelin guide, it's not like a comprehensive listing of restaurants and everything. It's like these are the most noteworthy restaurants in New York. And then the smart ones are the best of the most noteworthy. So just being in there is an honor, but I guess it's kind of like recognition that there are some restaurants out there that are still really good and that you should still go check out.

They just don't necessarily check the the boxes of the five criteria of a perfect meal every single time, but it's still definitely worth checking out. They came up with other criteria and they found the first one, I believe, which it came out in 1955, was the Beb Gorman that we we mentioned a minute ago. Embiid being again Backbend or the Michelin Man.

Yes, this is like his faves totally as evidenced by him licking his lips, giving the OK symbol. Yes. So you're right, it started in the 50s, the original symbols a little red ah. Which stood for ah French for meal.

I'm not going to pronounce it ripostes or repass ripostes but it's basically the Gaumont means good little restaurant and it actually comes out, it's in, it's the regular guy but it also comes out as its own separate guide. Oh yeah. The Bib Gorman guide after the Michelin Guide is published. And these are good quality, good value cooking. And the idea is that you can go to a big German restaurant and you can get what they say is a three course meal.

I also saw one of the inspectors say like a main course, a dessert and a glass of wine, but like kind of like three things for about forty dollars per person, which they consider a good value. And that is if you're talking like really, really good stuff. And three thousand three hundred and sixty five restaurants right now are listed as BEB gourmands. Yeah.

So it's kind of like anybody can pick that up and be like, let's see where we're going to go to dinner tonight, basically, you know. Forty dollars you could you can drop forty dollars a person that like Outback pretty easily. So that is pretty, that is pretty remarkable that it's a bloomin onion. Go for this. I guarantee you it's eleven or twelve bucks. How you think. Sure. Let's look right now you talk I'm going to look up how much a blooming onion this.

I got to say I haven't been to an Outback Steakhouse since, I don't know, probably two decades.

But that bloomin onion is blooming delicious. Yeah. Yeah for sure. You mean delicious.

You made a joke while we were on the road the other day about how we should go to Outback. And I was like, yeah, I believe you would be pretty good. But it turns out it was just a joke and we didn't end up there. Mm. How's that for an anecdote.

OK, good. Until the part where you didn't go and get one of those bloomin onions on your road trip.

Great. So you can get yourself a blooming onion for eight dollars in ninety nine cents. I stand corrected.

All right. That sounds about right with tax though. You're approaching ten. Yeah. And if you want a regular sized cheese fries, it's eleven bucks, so. But you've got to get some extra sauce with that blooming onion, so that probably pushes it over 10. Yeah, unless that's a freebie. I don't know how the gallon gallon size, uh.

Were you were you think in the blooming onion was going to make an appearance in this episode on Michelin stars?

I did not either. I give that for tires, though. All right. So another symbol they have is the plate to Michelin. How are you going to pronounce that in French?

Oh, I see it. Yeah, well, see it. That sounds about right. This is a symbol of a dinner plate flanked by knife and fork. This debuted in twenty sixteen. And this is just good cooking. It is not it means it doesn't have a star, it's not a big boogerman, but they call it quote, simply good food.

I'm not entirely sure what the distinction is between the the plate in the big gourmand rating. It I think it's money. OK, so this could still be expensive or is it cheaper than the big Gaumont?

I don't know. I think the big Gorman is specifically cheap and the plate Michelin can be pricey, but just not good enough for a star, just not good enough or looks like a sub star rating, I guess. Sub star, but more expensive than 40 bucks a person, OK. Otherwise it would be a big Gaumont.

They also one other way to kind of understand the big Garamond is we'll talk about the inspectors a little bit in a minute. But apparently the ratings are they use a hive mind kind of thing where they'll have different inspectors go to see what they think about an inspectors rating of a restaurant, and then they kind of pool them all together. And the average is what the what the restaurant gets. That was one explanation I saw. And by proxy, the bigger mind is say like one inspectors.

Like if you happen to be talking to a Michelin inspection and said, what's your what's your real favorite restaurant in this town, they probably give you a big gourmand recommendation. Not necessarily. Everyone in the Michelin organization would would agree that it deserves a star. Three stars. But this one, inspectors like this is really honestly the best restaurant in town. Right.

And then they would take you into an alley and strangle you to death because you're not supposed to know who I am. Right, exactly. I'm so sorry. But you know, too much like the talented Mr. Ripley at the end. Oh, spoiler. Uh, well, that now it doesn't matter.

OK, you have the Greenstar, which debuted just last year in twenty twenty. That is restaurants and chefs who are practicing sustainable gastronomy, sourcing locally, reducing waste, renewable energy in the restaurants.

Then you have the CORVER or covers and that is based I think I mean, the food's got to be good too, but it's really has to do with ambience. You can get one to five covers, which means like if you really want to go to a like a special, like a romantic dinner or something, you might want to look under the covers section.

Yeah. And make it even more arcane and obscure. You can have five covers, but if it's in black ink, it's not as good as a few covers in red ink. Yeah, a little confusing. So if you have, if there's a place that has five covers in red ink, it's their most charming, splendid atmosphere of any restaurant they've ever encountered. But yeah, it does. Surely it has to do it takes the food into account to they're not going to send you like a slop bucket.

That's really charming. But they the where's the stars are just the food.

This kind of takes into account the ambience more. Yeah.

And then they started you can see symbols for different specialties and different regions like in Spain. They'll have a little toothpick and wine symbol for topics like the best tapas places in the UK and Ireland. They'll have beer mugs for the best pubs. If you see little grape symbols, that means someone might have a really good wine list or a cocktail glass, obviously, for good cocktails, ryuzaki bottle, stuff like that. So if you see all these little symbols, obviously, I'm sure there's a what you call it a legend.

Yeah. A legend that explains all this stuff.

But we're here to do that for you. Yeah.

From what I can tell, you have to be basically a trained Michelin inspector to decipher some of this stuff once it gets real deep, you know.

Well, we've been saying this word, Inspector, without explaining that. And people are probably going, why do they keep talking about detectives? But we're not talking about detectives, we're talking about inspectors, which is their word for reviewers.

Yeah, actually, I don't even think they call them that. They call them anonymous restaurant. Oh, no, they do call them inspectors. I'm sorry I misread so well. And that makes a lot of sense, too, because there is this definite heartiness to this whole thing. But at the same time, from what Michelin has finally started to choose to reveal about its inspectors, they do seem to actually be worthy of such a kind of Hoddy title.

They are typically trained in and have like real life experience in the hospitality industry, the restaurant industry, hotel industry. And they will train and actually go through this kind of vetting process for about a year. Basically, that also includes an apprenticeship, because this is not the kind of thing where you can be like, oh, these are the five criteria. I totally understand this. Right. What makes me nerve wracking than that? And also, if you ask me, the best way to lose love of food would be to become a Michelin restaurant inspector because it sounds like a lot of not fun work.

Yes, I would much rather just go, you know, enjoy a meal at a restaurant than have to review it any day of the week. Yeah.

There's a cool article I read from Forbes from Twenty Nineteen by Carla Ellendale called The Secret Life of an anonymous Michelin restaurant inspector where they talked to this woman who was an inspector. And they remain anonymous even when they're interviewed, which, as we'll talk about in a bit, is happening a little bit more over the past like 10 to 20 years. But, you know, she talks about the rigors of the process and you know how, you know, some of them are trained Somalia.

Some of them were chefs, but they were they're all in the restaurant industry at some point. And they get there, obviously, their travel and hotel and their food all covered. I was trying to find the pay. I saw some guesses that it was maybe close to one hundred thousand dollars a year to eat about 300 meals a year in these restaurants. Yeah. To not be allowed to eat with your at least if you're reviewing the restaurant with a spouse or any other friend like you're supposed to be in there alone, you got to take these pictures, which, you know, people do that a lot now any day.

So that's not going to make you stand out. But the thing that I saw was that the hardest part, at least from the point of view of this one inspector, was maintaining your anonymity, because I think they said you're allowed to tell your closest family members, but really no one else. And in this day of social media, it's I don't know how much of a social media presence you can even have. It'd be a giveaway if you were like, you know, in in New York, again, these 10 meals out this week, right?

You know, I'm in Paris now. I'm in Los Angeles now. I'm in Chicago. Yeah, I'm in Tokyo. Like, people would kind of catch on, I think. Yeah. You just yeah. I think you're supposed to just be a lot more kind of plain, Jane, or. Playing games, I guess, for never to put that way, but I think I just came upon something, too, where you just kind of unremarkable and not really noticeable, but at the same time, you're not sticking out because you're so unnoticeable and you just kind of have to live a life of anonymity, not just at work, but in general.

Like you're saying, like it's a bit of a grind. It sounds like a big grind, like 10 meals a day or maybe 10 meals a week very frequently, you know, lunch and dinner. And we're talking like like you said, tasting menus or, you know, prefix menus where they're eating like multiple course meals. I saw that that New Yorker interview with Maxim or M is what they they nicknamed her the Michelin inspector. And I guess the order as many courses as the restaurant offers.

So if they have, you know, soup, salad, appetizer, main pasta, dessert, like you would be expected to order a dish off of each of those courses for lunch and then go do the same thing for dinner, five days a week, three weeks out of the month, all year long. But you sound like a grind for sure.

Yeah. By yourself. Eating by yourself is it can be kind of liberating and fun. But after a while, that is one of the loneliest things you can possibly do. And the other thing, too, is if it's if it's frowned upon for you to bring a friend or a family member, I guarantee it's frowned upon for you to just be sitting at your phone. So you're just sitting there like a total weirdo by yourself at dinner. Enjoying attention to the salt shaker basically is what you're what you're doing.

Yeah, enjoying a world class meal. It does not sound fun to me at all. I just rather it's just one of the things I'd just rather be an everyday person and just enjoy it on that level. Like, I feel bad for people who are so into making movies that they can enjoy a movie anymore. It's the same exact thing you like.

I just want to be a regular guy at a three star restaurant sitting there looking at my phone right now.

I want to be able to be on Twitter the whole time. All right. I think we should take another break and then we'll talk about this. All sounds rosy, but we'll talk about some of the criticisms right after this.

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Well, they are definitely well trained and all that. But but the thing is, is with their inspectors, Michelin has always been the term is they're famously anonymous, like they really, like you were saying, go to great lengths to hide their there are people and their their identities. And a lot of people are like, well, who are these people? Are they actually qualified in that kind of caused a lot of controversy in itself. Yeah.

And I kind of Maudet singing the praises of the guide itself, but it's all become sort of controversial over the years and there's been a lot of criticism levied. Like you mentioned, first of all, the inspectors, there have been some things that have come out over the years. There was a book written by an inspector after they left the job called The Inspector Sits Down at the Table by Pascal Remy, where Pascal said There are not nearly enough of us.

There are way fewer. We're not going to these restaurants as much as we should. There have been restaurants that said, hey, I was knocked down a star. And I know for a fact that no one even came into the restaurant this past year. No inspector came into our restaurant. So how do we get knocked back a star? Right. And there's kind of a general I think within the industry there's a general feeling of this thing has too much importance over and too much hold over us as chefs and as restaurateurs.

And we're kind of beholden to this book. Oh, yeah. To the point where people I mean, there was there was one chef who took his own life, Bernard French chef Bernard Loiseau, who lost a star. He had famously said, if I ever lose my stars, I will kill myself. And in 2003, that happened. And he he shot himself in the head with a shotgun. He very much was suffering from depression. So we're not saying, you know, this is all at the hands of the Michelin guide, but it just sort of hammers home the stress of trying to achieve and then maintain these stars.

Yeah, it goes both ways, right. Like, if you don't have the stars yet and you're just starting out, you want to get them or else people are going to be like, well, I thought you were like an up and coming superstar where you're Michelin stars. Yeah. But then once you get them, it's like it's just this albatross around your neck trying to keep them. And the guy whose restaurant you mean I went to for engagement, Danielle Boulard, I believe he actually took her sorry blood.

He took a kind of a cool attitude to the whole thing. He had three stars and he got knocked down to two after I had been there. But he he was basically like, look, you know, I mean, we make a lot of changes to our menu. And sometimes it's stuff that we want to lock in and put on the menu three times. It's us just messing around. But our customers seem to really like it. And so if if that means that we're not putting out perfect food every single time, but we're being more creative and spontaneous, I'm okay with that.

Taking chances. That was a very, very rare attitude from what I saw. More likely, if you lose a star, you openly weep like Gordon Ramsay did when one of his restaurants, the London in New York City, lost two stars. It had two stars in it, lost them both from one guy to the next, and he wept. Apparently, he won't talk about it if you ask him about it. That is much more the reaction to Michelin stars than than Danielle's response, which is kind of like, you know, I'll take it or leave it.

It just kind of ruined your life one way or the other. And I think a lot of people in the restaurant industry really resent that this anonymous group of people whose qualifications they're not even sure of hold that kind of sway over their lives, over their entire careers, you know.

Yeah, actually, now that I think of it, Emilian, I stayed at the London one time and I think we ate breakfast there. There you go. Two stars. Yeah. I'm not sure when it was as far as the stars coming and going, but yeah. So we ate there. Another sort of rarity was in twenty seventeen when French chef Sebastian Brahe said, Hey, Michelin Guide, can you remove my stars and take them out of there.

And a couple of interesting quotes. He said, after twenty years under the banner of three stars, I wanted to find serenity, freedom and independence. But three stars represented a form of permanent and growing tension for me. And today I only want to be accountable to my customers. So too much stress. And he was like, I want to I want to experiment and I want to try different things. And I don't want to necessarily live my or spend the rest of my career.

He's trying to maintain these stars, right? And by all accounts, it was a pretty liberating experience for him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that again, that also is very rare for the most part. It's like your career is about trying to get and then trying to keep those stars. And just the kind of the frustration that goes along with it has made a lot of people level accusations toward the Michelin guide, including that, you know, they hand out like that one guy, xPos. They said that they hand out stars or maintain stars among some of their friends, like very famous French chefs.

That is absolutely not fair. But and there are definitely plenty of people out there who just go to these restaurants so that they can brag about having gone to this restaurant. And that probably makes up a substantial part of the chef's clientele are the restaurant's clientele. And I would guess if you're a chef in this area, you probably hate people like that, even though, you know, they're coming to your restaurant. They're just being dbag. That's why they're there to show up for the dbag they are.

Can we say that?

Yeah. And I bet you half of those people say like, oh, my God, one of the best meals. And half of them say, I don't know why this thing is three stars. Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah. So there is that to it where people are like there's too much sway. Are these people even like being fair about this and then this? The star system attracts people who are just just there to say that they ate at a restaurant and are actually enjoying the food, all that exists. But it really seems over the last century that the Michelin guide has like it is legit, like if you go to a three star restaurant, you are probably going to have the best meal that you've ever had in your entire life.

Like, that's probably true. And that in and of itself legitimizes it, or at least, you know, lends credence to the idea that generally it's a legitimate, if not crushing rating system.

Yeah, there's been some other controversies over the years. In 2019, there was a lawsuit filed by French chef Mark Verrat who said, my restaurant based on the how to pronounce that last part, not Boise, Idaho, but I think Boise.

Boise, based on the Boise. Yes. All right. Let's go with that.

He was downgraded from three to two stars. He said, quote, It's worse than the loss of my parents, which I'm sure spirits were like mercy for that. Right. And apparently the word on the street was the inspector accused the kitchen of using just a very common English cheddar cheese in a souffle dish that he says he was no sucker. I blue. He was really mad. He said, I demand to see that report. Michelin says, I don't know who you think you are, but you better watch it.

You're going to lose all your stars, buddy, but you can't see our reports. He filed a lawsuit. It became known as Cheder Gate, and then the case was thrown out when they couldn't produce evidence that actually hurt his business. It actually helped his business because all the publicity. All right.

So that report thing actually struck me as surprising. I saw that they will share their reports. I mean, you know. Really? Yeah, they won't. They obviously it won't say what inspector it came from or anything like that. But they say that restaurants who want to improve or get a star back or whatever and want to know what happened, they they will share the report. So I didn't understand that maybe what I read was was wrong. But the Michelin guide has responded to this kind of like criticism and bad publicity, you know, the suicide of what was his last name.

So, yeah, in 2003, three was really a dark cloud that hung over the Michelin guide. You know, the criticism for basically rating the best French restaurants in New York and their first American guide. All this stuff really amounted to some bad press for the Michelin guide, and it kind of evolved in the 21st century to become a lot more worldly, a lot less French Franco centric, a lot less stuffy and to expand. And today, actually, the country for the city with the largest number of stars among its restaurants isn't Paris.

It's Tokyo. Yeah, how about that to say Tokyo? I've been saying it wrong. He says, oh, it's not Tokyo. It's Tokyo.

Yeah, I've been saying it wrong for forty nine, almost fifty years. Yeah. I'm catching up to you. Forty four for me because that was my first word actually. Yeah.

In fact I've been seeing Tokyo since I was in the womb so yeah it's opened up to Asia, it's expanded in the US market. Like we mentioned before they. In 2016, they awarded their first ever star to a Hocker star, which is Singapore Street Food, which is really cool. It was Hong Kong soya sauce, chicken, rice and noodle.

Which man that thing got a star. And I just want to go there right now and eat it. Me too. The other thing I want to eat. Is in the 2020 edition to Taipei, they had a take out only street stall that has one thing on the menu, which is a steam pork bun with ground peanuts and cilantro. They've been serving this for 60 years and they gave that a bib.

Gorman whatever the medal or the licking lips and OK, licking lips.

Guy Yeah, I want to eat that pork bun more than anything I can think of. The thing is, Chuck, is the the thing that I hate almost as much as waiting at a red light when there's no cars coming from the other direction is standing in line for food. I hate that.

I feel like such a chump now. A sucker. And after X number of minutes, it is not worth it. It doesn't matter how good the food is, it's not worth it, because I also usually don't like the people I'm standing in line with, you know, like a certain kind of like food fan that'll stand in line for an hour and a half. They're also probably the ones that brag about the number of stars or whatever. Yeah.

So there's a lot I don't like about that.

And it turns out Michelin has has heard my concerns. And Jiro Sushi, the sushi point. Oh yeah. That that they did the documentary about after that documentary. You could not. Still to this day I think that documentaries from like two thousand, nine or ten to this day you cannot get in to Duros. It's a 10 seat sushi bar. That's probably the best sushi in the world and you just can't get in it. Sorry. Yes. You have to basically be a head of state or a celebrity these days.

And it was a 10 seat, three star, three Michelin starred sushi restaurant in a train station in Tokyo. And Michelin took its stars back because they say the guide is meant for, you know, any person to be able to go to these restaurants, the restaurants they recommend anybody should be able to get into. Like, yes, some people are going to spend a much more substantial portion of their annual salary than other people. But you should be able to get into this place one way or another.

And with jurors, you just can't do that anymore. So they actually took their stars back. So they said, we wish you the best of luck. Not that you need it, but you don't need these stars and you can't really have them because you can't the average person can't get a seat in your place anymore.

Yeah, you know what this episode has really made me want to do? Eat, eat in a restaurant. Yes, dude. Yes.

This is very cruel to to put this one out right now in retrospect, because all I want to do is eat in a restaurant man so bad, just a good course meal starting out with like a martini or drink. Yes. A bloomin onion in there somewhere. Maybe a side of ranch.

I mean, like, yes, I cannot wait. It will happen again one day, man. I know for sure. OK, ok.

Well since Chuck said for sure, that means of course everybody, it's time for Listener Mail.

I'm going to call this. We've gotten a few of these lately, but this one I tagged about a month ago from people who have who finished their stuff.

You should know Jurnee. Nice and listen to all the episodes. Hey, everybody, I've done it. It took me two years of listening any time I was driving. And I have to drive a lot for work. But I've finally gotten through the entire back catalogue going all the way back to how gasoline works, how those first episodes were so not very good.

Yeah, I don't know what I'll do in between new episodes now, but I wanted to say thanks for the many, many hours of learning and laughing and what has to be hundreds of Simpsons references. At least my favorite episode was either nuclear semiotics or the Dyatlov Pass mystery. But but I need to thank Josh for introducing me to Teddy the Beaver.

Oh, yeah. Teddy the baby beaver or no.

He's the one that built like the dam at the in the doorway of the bedroom, right. Oh, was that. I think so. He was so cute. So cute.

The greatest moment in the show, however, was during what I recall, uh, to be the Beagle Brigade episode when Josh predicted covid-19 by talking about someone's getting a disease by eating a bat.

Yeah. A lot of people say I predicted that I, I called out a magazine article that I read that predicted it. I don't know if I particularly predicted it, but thank you for. And I don't even know if that's the origin of covid now, isn't that sort of in dispute? I don't know.

The last thing I heard was that it was either a pangolin or a bat.

I've heard that more than anything, you know, I'm saying, well, you're going to the wrong websites, buddy. I guess so. You need to find the truth. That's right.

Oh, God, I'm such a cartoon sweat. He says also.

Sorry, Chuck, but Sharknado can suck it. I wish to know for sure, but my mind was blown away when Josh said it. Thanks again for all the hard work and I look forward to 12 more years worth of episodes. And that is from Kyle in Phoenix, Arizona, who I guess went to our live show there.

He's a great live show on Kellogg, by the way, after that Phoenix show. That was a good one.

That was a good show. I think that's one where we got lassos.

Oh, it absolutely was. I still got that thing. Kathy with a K. That's right. I love that lasso.

Well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can send us a an email to stuff podcast that I heart radio dot com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio for more podcasts, my heart radio is the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What do Explorers, a former newspaper editor and a Minnesota insurance salesman, have in common, they all wanted to be the first to reach the North Pole.

I'm Katlehong, science editor at Mental Floss and the host of The Quest for the North Pole, a new podcast launching January 15th about our insatiable desire to explore the mysteries of the Arctic and stand at the top of the world. I Heart Radio is number one for podcast, but don't take our word for it. Listen to the quest for the North Pole every Friday on the I Heart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Every season profiles one legendary artist to start. We'll explore the faces of David Bowie. Each episode tells the story of one of his iconic personas. Together, they form an intimate portrait of a complex cultural giant.

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