The glory — and the grind — of winning a Michelin star, by Gordon Ramsay, Michel Roux Jnr and Tom Parker Bowles

As marketing ruses go, the Michelin Guide is surely up there with the greats. ‘It started, all those years ago, as a way to flog tyres,’ is how Tom Parker Bowles puts it. It sounds blunt, but it’s not wrong. Michelin was founded as a rubber manufacturer in 1889 by two brothers, André and Édouard Michelin. Two years later, after helping a stranded cyclist with a puncture, they decided tyres needed reinventing. Why were bicycle tyres glued to the rims? Fiddly repairs required frustrated hours. The answer was to make tyres detachable, fixed in minutes.

This turned out to be the easy part. In the mid 1890s, Michelin started fitting its tyres to motor cars, but selling them was proving a challenge. There were fewer than 3,000 cars pottering about France at the time and drivers were unconvinced that touring the country in this way was practical. To promote the idea, in 1899, the brothers wrote what would become the 1900 Guide Michelin, 400 pages listing petrol stations, garages for repairs and instructions for replacing a tyre. Local landmarks were overlooked, but rooms to rest and a few places to eat were included. Some 35,000 copies were printed that year, free of charge to drivers. The little red book was born.

Ambitious, the brothers expanded — to Belgium in 1904, to Britain in 1911 (where the little red book was, in fact, blue) — but, in 1920, André found copies of their books being used in a garage to prop up a workbench. Declaring ‘Man only truly respects what he pays for!’, he relaunched the guide at seven francs a go. Advertising was removed, hotels were included, restaurants were afforded more attention. He then hired anonymous inspectors to investigate pitstops worthy of a motorist’s stop and, in 1926, the truly special places received Michelin’s first-ever stars. The hierarchy of two and three stars was not introduced until 1931, and its terms were defined five years later. One star? A very good restaurant in its own category (and worth a stop). Two? Excellent cooking, worth a detour. Three? Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey. In all the years since, the guide has never deviated from these demarcations.

Officially, that is: Michelin itself is on record claiming to judge what’s on the plate and nothing more — yet old editions of the guide declare that, for three stars, fine wines and faultless service are a must. Retired inspectors say consistency is all; some chefs are sure decor matters. However, Michelin stays tight-lipped. ‘I certainly don’t know the methodology of what they do and how they do it,’ admits John Williams, executive chef of the London Ritz, where he holds two stars. No one seems to.

The mystery around Michelin helps fuel its power. It’s thought there are about 140 inspectors, all of whom dine out for as many as 275 meals a year, sticking to a specific region: the job is demanding enough without constant global travel. Their role is to appear just as any other customer, although they are rarely young; usually, a decade or so of hospitality experience and a proven palate are a must. Meals are judged on five criteria: quality of ingredients; mastery of culinary techniques; harmony of flavours; personality and emotion conveyed by the chef in the food; and consistency across both the menu and different visits. The inspectors decide stars unanimously and collaboratively, reaching decisions at meetings with the international director of the Michelin Guides, since 2018 Gwendal Poullennec, alongside the ‘local’ editor. If consensus is unreachable, more visits are taken until it can be. These are often annual, sometimes less frequent than that and sometimes more, if the guide is considering promotion or demotion.

In truth, the Michelin brothers’ bid to flog more tyres didn’t take off until long after they were gone. The guide’s influence began to take hold in the 1950s, growing through the 1960s and 1970s as the protégées of French master Fernand Point, who held three stars from 1933 until his death in 1955, began to measure themselves against its pages. Point himself charged higher prices than his competitors nearby, justifying it with his Michelin recognition. Paul Bocuse, with his toque and tricolour neckerchief, became the world’s archetypal chef — such an indelible image that he inspired the ghostly Auguste Gusteau in Pixar’s Ratatouille — and although his reputation was bolstered by his three stars, his excellence in turn affirmed the guide as an arbiter of good taste. ‘Michelin is the only guide that counts,’ Bocuse declared — and it became so. Its power truly started showing when the Troisgros brothers, Jean and Pierre — nouvelle cuisine pioneers with an eponymous restaurant — became sufficiently famous from it that tourists would set out to the little-known commune Roanne in search of their salmon and sorrel.

In Britain, the fun really began in 1974. Some 63 years after the guide first appeared here, it returned in acknowledgement of a country that was finally beginning to get its culinary act together. That year, Michelin handed out its first UK stars, 25 of them. This was deemed significant enough that the front cover of the Daily Telegraph was dedicated to the news: a sketch of Michelin mascot Bibendum rowing across the channel to Dover’s white cliffs. The guide, then, leaned both towards classical French (Le Gavroche, The Waterside Inn), upmarket British fare (Richard Shepherd at the Capital Hotel, the Connaught restaurant, Simpson’s-in-the-Strand), but also went further than might be expected, granting Chinatown’s Lee Ho Fook a star, making it the first Chinese restaurant in Britain to have one. This was impressive for a publication that has long been criticised for being behind the times. ‘They’ve taken their time realising that it’s not only French and Japanese that are the pinnacle of haute cuisine,’ laments Tom. ‘They’re pretty slow, aren’t they? I mean, they’re French.’

Over the next 20 years, the bad behaviour began, as star-chasing chefs exacted standards that fed the rumour mill and made head-lines. Pierre Koffmann’s kitchen at Chelsea’s La Tante Claire — starred from 1978–98, with three for its last five years — was whispered about for its intensity: Pierre relentlessly demanded perfection. He was said to send dishes back again and again until he deemed them passable, leaving chefs shaking wrecks. Nico Ladenis, reportedly the first self-taught chef to win three stars in Britain, was so committed to standards that it wasn’t chefs alone of whom he’d demand excellence: customers at Chez Nico were barred if they wanted prawn cocktail, well-done steak or lamb anything but pink.

Gordon Ramsay has long had his singular approach to kitchen discipline well documented on television, but perhaps more telling was his reaction to losing two stars in one fell swoop at his New York restaurant, The London. ‘It was like losing a girlfriend,’ he said. The unrelenting pressure of knowing the inspector could call at any moment might be why several chefs have handed back their stars and why, in 2012, the late Skye Gyngell left Petersham Nurseries in London’s Richmond a year after winning one, calling it a curse. ‘If I ever have another restaurant, I pray we don’t get a star,’ she wrote at the time.

However, there have, for some years, been questions over whether the guide’s power is what it once was. Its taste-making monopoly, certainly, is no longer unassailable. ‘I do think public perception has changed,’ observes Michel Roux Jnr, who oversaw the legendary two-starred Le Gavroche in Mayfair until it closed in 2024. ‘You can find where to eat now through social media, through different platforms, television…’ For John, a Michelin star — or two — remains a badge of honour. ‘I would like to think it still means as much to chefs, certainly for those striving for such things,’ he reflects, ‘but I’m much too old to say I’m pursuing three. You cook to the highest standards you can for your guests, but that’s a philosophy for The Ritz.’

This feature originally appeared in the March 11, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.