After hearing good things about the Korean historical romance Bon Appétit, Your Majesty, I decided to give the new Netflix show a watch. The show focuses on a talented young chef, Yeon Ji-yeong, whose accidental time travel adventure takes her to Korea’s Joseon era (approximately the year 1500), where she must cook for a tyrannical king in order to survive.
A good chunk of the pilot takes place in Paris, where the chef competes in (and wins) a popular cooking competition show. In addition to a monetary prize, she is also awarded, somewhat confusingly, the title of “Michelin-starred chef.” Specifically, part of her prize is the opportunity to become the chef de cuisine at a three Michelin-starred restaurant.
Though the show is fantastical both in style and content, I couldn’t stop thinking about this little detail. It’s common to see titans of the culinary world referred to as “Michelin-starred chefs,” but the moniker isn’t a legitimate title, but rather more of a branding exercise. The Michelin Guide, the famous arbiter of taste published by the French tire company, awards stars to restaurants, not chefs. To say a chef is “Michelin-starred” is to imply that they worked, at some point, in a Michelin-starred restaurant. No easy feat, to be sure, but a chef could borrow from that brand long after working at such an establishment, even if the restaurant in question loses its stars or closes down.
A restaurant can earn, at most, three Michelin stars, an honor so rare that there are only 157 such establishments in the world at present. The chefs behind these restaurants work for years, and are judged rigorously over an extended period of time, in order to earn one star, let alone three. The idea that the head chef of a three-starred restaurant would step aside to allow some rando from a cooking competition show to take over their business is a wild proposition, which would almost certainly result in the restaurant’s immediate ruin.
In 2008, Gordon Ramsay at the London, the famed chef’s first US restaurant, earned two Michelin stars. The next year, when Ramsay left the restaurant, the quality began a downward spiral, leading the restaurant to lose both stars in 2013, and eventually close in 2014. A lack of consistency was cited as one of the major reasons for the demotion, a hard thing to avoid when your executive chef/owner dips out.
L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges, once the oldest three-starred restaurant in the world, maintained its ranking from 1965 all the way until 2020, when it was bumped down to two stars. The loss was undoubtedly a result of the death of the restaurant’s head chef, the legendary Paul Bocuse, in 2018. And who took over from Bocuse after his death? Chef Christophe Muller, who trained under the culinary icon for two decades in order to be worthy of taking up his mantle.
Most other Michelin-starred chefs to leave their posts usually pass on their restaurants to their proteges, or even their children, as Le Suquet’s Michel Bras did with his son, Sébastian, in 2009. Yet these instances are rare altogether. After all, why give up your life’s work at the peak of your career?
I’m probably overthinking this here. But wherever chefs are involved, there’s always food for thought. I hope Yeon Ji-yeong eventually finds her way back to her three-Michelin starred restaurant. As for me? I’ll just have to settle for fond memories of one.
