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Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

luxeat.com

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Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#291

Post by tomcam »

Igelau wrote: post #199
pjc50 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference would be completely lost on them. I've definitely heard the life advice to avoid trying this kind of thing in case you do like it, then everything less is permanently tainted with the knowledge that it's not as good. However, western super-high-price dining tends to be one or both of "demoscene for food" or "NFTs for food" - demoscene: a series of increasingly elaborate and labor-intensive techniques…

> avoid trying this kind of thing in case you do like it I maintain that this is a good reason why no one should eat placenta. What if you find out it's the best thing you've ever had? You'd have to go into a fake business processing them into pills for people, that's what.

Hey, just thought I'd reach out to you. I'm Tom from GoPlacenta.io (YC S21). We're out to make meaningful changes in the placenta market segment. We've already built a review platform and we're teaming with 23AndMe for an integrated vertical approach...

sorry

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#292

Post by vander_elst »

I'd be curious to know more about how they assure the same evaluation quality in different continents. I've been to several starred restaurants in Europe and US, but I had VERY different experiences: the quality of food and service were on two completely different levels (yes, I read that's more about the food, but I'd still expect a certain quality when it comes to service as well).

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#293

Post by wan23 »

kragen wrote: post #63
OJFord wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, no? We may have an unexpected (to me) dialect barrier. To the best of my knowledge, McDonalds serves primarily burgers (is a burger what you're calling a sandwich?), Starbucks serves (coffee aside) mostly sandwiches, and also salads and stuff. (It is about ten and three years since I've been to one, respectively, but I doubt that much has changed!)

Apparently there's significant dialectal variation on whether the "hamburger" is a sandwich, including the bread, or just the meat often used to form the filling of a sandwich: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger In my usage, you can eat just a hamburger, but McDonalds won't sell you one; they'll insist on putting it between slices of bread, thus making a hamburger sandwich of it. If you want to eat just the hamb…

You can definitely convince McDonald's to sell you a hamburger on a plate without bread. A hamburger isn't a sandwich, but it is commonly served on a bun in sandwich form. Like how spaghetti is common served with sauce, and if you see that dish you just call it spaghetti, but if you see a plate of just the pasta it's still spaghetti.

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#294

Post by prometheus76 »

morley wrote: post #262
prometheus76 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying a rotisserie chicken and throwing it in an instant pot with some carrots, onions, celery, and enough water to cover it (and some thyme, rosemary, and bay leaves) for an hour or so has surprisingly good results, and is fairly easy to do. Pour the liquid through a strainer. I pour it into ice cube trays and freeze it, so I can just grab a couple of cubes when I'm making a pan sauce or soup.

It's easy enough to start with an uncooked chicken, or better yet, wings for the high collagen content. When you start with a rotisserie chicken, you've a lost a lot of the chicken's flavor to the roaster's drip pan.

I prefer the flavor from the already-roasted chicken in my stock, but yeah a raw chicken works just as well. Just needs more cooking time in the pressure cooker. My main point was that making stock at home is a lot faster if you have a pressure cooker.

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#295

Post by moehm »

phonypc wrote: post #285
moehm wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, no wine maker adds TCA [0] into a wine bottle to make it taste like wet dogs. If you burn your sauce, that's probably an off-flavor. Smoked meat and cilantro taste like intended, no undesired flavors there. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4,6-Trichloroanisole

I brought up cilantro because I thought it was common-enough knowledge that, for some people, it does not taste like intended and is very much an off-flavor that can ruin an otherwise enjoyable dish.

> for some people, it does not taste like intended

Yes, but I still think, this corner case is much better handled at the service level than the dish level. I do know they ask for food allergies before, I do not know if they ask for your cilantro preferences.

You can't say (as a critic) "this dish was flawed, because it had cilantro in it", but you can say "I didn't enjoyed it, because it had cilantro in it".

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#296

Post by dotancohen »

rsynnott wrote: post #275
dotancohen wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were brand new, ripped myself and compared with the CD still in the drawer. Using different bitrates and other settings, whatever was documented for the CLI tools at the time. I was using some Red Hat variant, but this was before Fedora. In 2002 I believe. Though I'm sure that the encoders got better, really, the quality of the common rip has not.

Yeah, the out-of-box encoders included with Linux distros in 2002 would likely not have been great. If you were lucky you might have gotten an early version of LAME. If you do the experiment again, it may be worth using either the likes of Spotify/Apple Music (okay, strictly speaking neither are mp3, but same general idea, and they'll put effort into encoding properly), or using a decent modern encoder (LAME, the App…

Yes, now that you mention it, it was in fact LAME. I'll try again sometime with abcde in its default settings.

By the way, I once made a GUI for abcde called abcdefg (A Better CD Encoder For Gnome) but never did anything with it - it was really just an exercise to learn the GTK libraries because Zim Wiki used them too. But I now regret not publishing it just because it had such a cool name.

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#297

Post by sizzle »

zikduruqe wrote: post #252
tomcam wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Borscht is like pizza to me. It’s just never bad.

The same with BBQ, beer and sex. None of it is ever "bad"; just better or worse than other times you had it.

I’ve definitely had some bad beer and BBQ that will never willingly touch my tastebuds again.

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#298

Post by Ekaros »

maddyboo wrote: post #128
fastball wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found Michelin stars in Japan came with way less pretense (and by extension / in conjunction – way smaller price tag) than in Europe / US.

Most things in Japan seem to come with less pretense.

I would argue that it is likely different type of pretence. Just watch some films about food and how many years of training it needs and so on.

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#299

Post by moehm »

refurb wrote: post #84
moehm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge misconception that professional tasters are rating by their personal preferences. I can't really talk about restaurants, but about wine and spirits. As a taster, you don't look for things you personally enjoy. You look for "quality". That is, balance, complexity, off-flavors, typicity etc. Just because I like my wine oxidized and my meat burned, I can't say the meal was terrible. (But maybe the servic…

But quality is still a subjective measure to a large extent. Sure, if something is so salty it's not palatable or your cheesecake is lumpy, one can have a more objective assessment. But even if "professional tasters" agree on what balance means, that's still a subjective measure agreed upon by a select group. As someone who has eaten at Michelin star restaurant and had a mediocre experience, I'm of the mind if I like…

First, it's okay if you enjoy some things and others don't. No critic says you have to enjoy what a "select group" (aka experts) thinks is good quality.

Studying food is not different from studying music. Everyone can hear the music and everyone tastes food (daily), but that does not make you an expert in both.

> I'm of the mind if I like it then it's an enjoyable experience

For you as a normal person that is totally okay, but it is not the standard a good critic should follow.

Re: Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector

#300

Post by jelliclesfarm »

nicolas_t wrote: post #150
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #108

Having worked in Michelin starred restaurants, we almost always know when an alleged inspector is coming..(there is usually a chart with photos and nicknames in the locker room). the exhilaration and high after the results are out is real. Also..chefs talk. We know. But at that level, it doesn’t matter. Every plate that goes out has to be perfect..has to be impeccable.

Sometimes I wonder if the Michelin inspector in two of the restaurants I know here who do not deserve a star were served other dishes. It's either that or the inspector rated the interior design and service.

They visit multiple times. A sub par restaurant would never earn its stars. In Europe anyways. I don’t know about Americas or Asia and beyond.
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