Michelin wanted people to drive more, because people driving wore out their tires meaning more tire sales for Michelin. They created a travel guide that included a star system for restaurants that were worth travelling to, eventually settling on the 3 star system where 1 star was worth a stop along your route, 2 stars was worth a detour along your route and 3 stars is worth a dedicated trip to eat at.
Which everyone always gets wrong, since there’s apparently a deeply ingrained cultural misconception that a restaurant can achieve up to five Michelin stars. Even Ratatouille got this wrong (although possibly deliberately), with the implication that Gusteau’s was a “five” star restaurant, its downgrading to four is the event that caused Gusteau himself to lose his will to live, and afterwards it was downgraded again to three. Which is already the maximum. Either Gusteau’s was just originally so good it broke the scale, or it was the sole and singular haute cuisine establishment in all of Paris that was not ranked by Michelin for some reason.
The various hotel ranking schemes have a one-to-five stars scale, though, which is probably what most people conflate the Michelin stars with. Unlike the Michelin ratings there is no central or consistent authority on hotel rankings so they’re pretty arbitrary to begin with and to a certain degree just a marketing ploy.
The 5 stars of ratatouille might have been an anachronistic shorthand of good quality based more on how so much of what the average person is familiar with is a 5 star rating system (think product reviews on Amazon, app reviews on Google play/app store, driver ratings on Uber etc)
Like, I imagine people have an understanding that Michelin stars are a thing but don’t know what those stars mean other than more stars is more gooder. And to muddle it up even more in the present day a single chef can have more than 3 stars because that chef owns multiple restaurants. (See British shouty chef’s 17 Michelin stars)
Yes, and possibly also so they can’t get sued or have to license the Michelin name somehow if they can point to the fact that their stars are clearly not the same thing.
![‘TASTING TIRES’ [OC] (the marketing gimmick that got out of hand imo)](https://feddit.nl/pictrs/image/009b3410-f52d-4b55-a2e7-4f0fdacd3606.webp){kind=link}
Michelin wanted people to drive more, because people driving wore out their tires meaning more tire sales for Michelin. They created a travel guide that included a star system for restaurants that were worth travelling to, eventually settling on the 3 star system where 1 star was worth a stop along your route, 2 stars was worth a detour along your route and 3 stars is worth a dedicated trip to eat at.
Which everyone always gets wrong, since there’s apparently a deeply ingrained cultural misconception that a restaurant can achieve up to five Michelin stars. Even Ratatouille got this wrong (although possibly deliberately), with the implication that Gusteau’s was a “five” star restaurant, its downgrading to four is the event that caused Gusteau himself to lose his will to live, and afterwards it was downgraded again to three. Which is already the maximum. Either Gusteau’s was just originally so good it broke the scale, or it was the sole and singular haute cuisine establishment in all of Paris that was not ranked by Michelin for some reason.
The various hotel ranking schemes have a one-to-five stars scale, though, which is probably what most people conflate the Michelin stars with. Unlike the Michelin ratings there is no central or consistent authority on hotel rankings so they’re pretty arbitrary to begin with and to a certain degree just a marketing ploy.
The 5 stars of ratatouille might have been an anachronistic shorthand of good quality based more on how so much of what the average person is familiar with is a 5 star rating system (think product reviews on Amazon, app reviews on Google play/app store, driver ratings on Uber etc)
Like, I imagine people have an understanding that Michelin stars are a thing but don’t know what those stars mean other than more stars is more gooder. And to muddle it up even more in the present day a single chef can have more than 3 stars because that chef owns multiple restaurants. (See British shouty chef’s 17 Michelin stars)
Yes, and possibly also so they can’t get sued or have to license the Michelin name somehow if they can point to the fact that their stars are clearly not the same thing.
I once saw a plaque that claimed the hotel was a “6-star”. It was a nice hotel, sure, but it made it clear those “stars” mean very little.