A Jammin Life

Ok, I have a really unpopular opinion that Michelin star foods are not that great. This is just an opinion so please don’t hate 😢 My heart is too weak to handle backlash. Not that I’m well known enough to even receive any backlash…

Anyway, I’ve been to a number of Michelin star restaurants, and not once did I leave feeling satisfied. I have a few reasons for this, so let me tell you why:

1. The course meals are too various in ingredients and style, so none of them stand out. I absolutely love omakase – beef omakase, sushi omakase, yakitori omakase, I’ve tried it all. And the thing about omakase is that they focus on one specific thing and they do it really freakin well. They serve the freshest seafood or the tenderest of steak cuts, and in between they serve other foods that pair well with their specialty. Michelin star restaurants, on the other hand, feel too haphazard in their menu planning. From tartare to octopus then steak, they try to serve everything. And they put caviar or gold or truffles just to make it look more expensive, but it doesn’t add to the taste of the dish they serve. It seems like they try to become jack of all trades and end up becoming master of none. Omakase, meanwhile, is truly the master of one thing and really highlights every way that one thing can be enjoyed.

2. I feel like I’m eating lab food when I eat at Michelin star restaurants. If mom and pop stores serve food that hit your soul, and fast food serve food that provide instant dopamine, I don’t know what Michelin star places serve. I understand that they need to be new and creative, and their menus are seasonal. But when you take a bite of their food, it doesn’t lead to nostalgia nor surprise at how tasty the dish is. It just makes you ponder and question what exactly you’re eating. The chefs should be creative with flavors and textures, but still try to keep remnants of what people can enjoy and relate to. Instead, what I have found is that they try so hard to push the boundaries of culinary arts that it just ends up being artistic and not so culinary. Just because you use food to make something doesn’t mean what you made is edible.

3. This part is a little embarrassing, but I staged for a Michelin star restaurant was. If you don’t know what that is, it is pretty much a 3-day internship phase in which you work at the restaurant without pay to show how you are in their kitchen. If they like you, you get hired! I say this is embarrassing because I didn’t get hired 😭 I promise this isn’t a revenge post though! I’m including what I’ve realized while being behind the scenes for a few days. I staged for the pastry cook position. This restaurant served 3 different dessert courses at the end. What I saw was that everything they made was something that wasn’t “special” in terms of ingredient quality or techniques that no one else could get or do, but it was special because of the time it took to make. What customers were paying for was the labor it took to create things. But hear me out – the labor was menial, unnecessary labor in my eyes. For example, one of the desserts had a baby mint garnish. They gave me a pack of mint leaves, and picked one out. My job was to pick out leaves of the exact same size that they picked out. It took so long to pick out just those leaves – and only for a garnish! And then, most shocking of all, the rest of the mint leaves went to compost. If this labor and waste was what I was paying for when I went to a Michelin star restaurant – no more! Just being backstage in the kitchen made me want to eat at these places less.

This is a few of the reasons why I don’t think Michelin star restaurants are worth the hype and don’t taste that great. But this is from my minimal experience, so if there’s a restaurant that can change my mind, let me know! I would love to be proved wrong and for my opinion to change so that I could enjoy the culinary experience. As of now, though, the list of famous places to check out has gotten smaller for me since I am not a big fan of Michelin star restaurants.