The sight of Gwendal Poullennec is liable to send restaurant kitchens into a fluster. Tall, neatly bearded, and wearing a slim-fit suit and tie, he is, at the age of 44, the international director of the Michelin Guide. I met him at Les Bains, a former nightclub recently turned into a boutique hotel in Paris’s Marais district.
To give some idea of Poullennec’s power, it helps to know about a phone call that happened in March of this year between him and Guy Savoy, a chef long lauded as the world’s best.
Savoy’s Monnaie de Paris restaurant had just lost one of its three Michelin stars. During the call, I was told by one of Poullennec’s lieutenants, the 70-year-old Savoy was distraught but said he understood the decision, admitted he hadn’t been spending enough time in the kitchen, and resolved to win the third star back in the future.
Others over the years haven’t taken the news so well. In 2019, Marc Veyvat, of the Haute-Savoie’s La Maison des Bois, sued Michelin for his restaurant’s demotion. Michelin’s decision, it was said, came down to the cheese used in the soufflé. (The court ruled against the chef.) More tragically, Bernard Loiseau is thought to have committed suicide in 2003 because he knew he was about to lose a star.
Under Poullennec, who joined the Michelin Guide straight from business school in 2004, and has been heading it since 2018, there has been a shift to make the guide more international—45 countries and counting—and adventurous. It’s keen to promote fresh, young talent, often at the expense of some creaky grandees. In doing so, the guide is beginning to shed its overripe and haughty image.
Early in his career, in 2007, Poullennec established the first Michelin Guide to Tokyo. “The Japanese used to think the best restaurants were the oldest—the masters, the chefs with years of experience,” he explains. “We said no. Based on our experience, the teacher isn’t always the best. We reversed everything. It’s boosted the standard of food and generated so much creativity, and now we have new generations going to restaurants. It was the opening of Japanese culture to the world.”
The move to modernize is also seen in the guide’s delivery—it’s now available as a slick, and free, app that you can use to book restaurant and hotel reservations. Michelin takes an e-commerce cut from each reservation, but it insists that its judgment remains independent and unbiased.
Additional revenues are generated through partnerships with tourism organizations, public authorities, and private companies—it’s been reported that South Korea’s tourism board paid Michelin $1.8 million to launch a Seoul guide, and Thailand’s government allegedly paid $4.4 million over five years for its own guide. Michelin states that it identifies countries or cities as meriting a gourmet guide first, and then gains financial support from that destination’s tourism bodies. Such recent partnerships include Argentina, Colorado, and Atlanta.
Printed guides to long-standing destinations (France, Spain, Italy, Great Britain, and Ireland) are still sold in large quantities—in 2007, Japan sold 100,000 copies of the Michelin Guide to Tokyo the very first day it launched. Michelin says the guide breaks even and is considered a marketing activity on behalf of the tire company.
Over coffee, Poullennec, who is conservative in appearance but passionate when talking about his guide, sheds a little light on the lives of his inspectors. He won’t say how many there are, but “our team is 25 nationalities, and they are all full-time employees, not freelancers. On average, inspectors are eating out at restaurants 300 times a year. They sleep away from home 100 to 150 nights a year. The inspectors come to us from the food, beverage, and hotel industries, and they only tell their nearest and dearest what they do. They need to retain their anonymity. We have chefs, restaurant managers, hotel managers, sommeliers, different profiles from across the industry.”
With tasting menus costing a small fortune and the wine list adding yet more zeroes, what, I wonder, is the biggest expenses bill that’s been submitted? “I’m approving literally millions,” reveals Poullennec. “There are some restaurants in which you can spend thousands for one meal. I’ve also approved meals in Hong Kong for less than a couple of euros. The inspectors who dine out at three-stars also dine out on street food—sometimes on the same day. Just like real customers. No one is eating at three-star restaurants twice a day, seven days a week. It’s also a way for us to blend into the crowd.”
“Based on our experience, the teacher isn’t always the best.”
There are five key Michelin criteria when it comes to restaurants: the quality of the produce; the mastery of the cooking; the harmony of the flavors; the personality of the chef represented through the dining experience; and the consistency of the dishes between inspectors’ visits.
A definition of the star grades was first published in 1936 and remains unchanged. One star means “very good”; two means “excellent and worth a detour”; and three, “exceptional and worth a special journey.” Poullennec dispels some of the myths: Stars have nothing to do with the spacing between the tables, the amount of cutlery, whether the bathroom sinks are marble, or whether the meal comes with a pressed linen napkin or a paper serviette. The stars are awarded to the establishment itself, not to a particular dish and not to the chef. A departing cuisinier cannot take their stars with them.
In the past, the guide’s hotels were picked mainly for their convenience, but now they are going to be selected according to far more taxing criteria. Starting this coming spring, notable hotels will be awarded Michelin “keys.” Some 5,300 hotels have been assessed in 120 territories, and although Michelin has yet to reveal precisely how they will be judged, Poullennac describes the qualities his team is looking for:
“[A hotel] should be a destination in itself and it should provide a real local experience. We won’t be featuring integrated resorts. We advise people to travel and discover cultures. We look for architecture and design, service, value for money. And we insist on authenticity; we want to see personal touches, we want to connect with people with unique stories, and we want to create real memories.”
He wants the hotel portion of the guide to be just as influential as the restaurant selection, and part of that is setting itself apart from influencer endorsements, advertising-led platforms, and social media.
“You have no real players sharing openly a truly independent hotel selection. With other sites and guides, the hotels apply [to be reviewed], they cover the reviewers’ costs, they join the membership program—that’s how they get recommended. We do it the reverse way. Our selection team looks for the best of the best, has the experience, recommends it accordingly—and we put it online whether the hotel wants it or not.” Poullennac and his team have been working on the first selection of hotels since 2018, and insist it will be constantly updated.
But what if the rooms are great but the restaurant is lousy? “A great restaurant with poor rooms—we won’t recommend the rooms. Likewise, a great hotel with a not-so-great restaurant—we will recommend you dine out.”
And finally, a question Poullennec is often asked: What is the most memorable meal he’s ever had? “The best meal is the one to come,” he says, dodging a reply, before speaking wistfully of ryokans (traditional Japanese inns) accessed through unmarked Tokyo doorways.
“Simplicity can be a real luxury,” he says. “For me, food is a way to access local culture. It’s a question of heritage, produce, and know-how, and sometimes simply an atmosphere.”
Adam Hay-Nicholls is the author of Charles Leclerc: A Biography and Smoke & Mirrors: Cars, Photography and Dreams of the Open Road