‘There is no guarantee’: How stressed are Miami chefs about keeping Michelin stars?
When his restaurant Stubborn Seed earned its first Michelin star in 2022, Jeremy Ford called every mentor he’d ever had to thank them. And then he wept.
“I thought, ‘I can die in peace now,’ “ said Ford, a former “Top Chef” winner who is also the creative force behind the restaurants Beauty & the Butcher in Coral Gables and The Butcher’s Club at PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens. “That’s how important that moment was. I couldn’t stop crying.”
Uncontrollable emotion is an understandable response to finding yourself with a Michelin star; after all, it’s an honor that translates into international fame, packed dining rooms and overflowing reservations.
But getting a star also comes with a darker side: the stress of retaining it.
Michelin releases a new guide every year — this year, the ceremony will be held for the first time in Miami on May 11 — and its anonymous inspectors continue to visit winners throughout the year after they’ve won. What the guide has bestowed, it can also take away: If a restaurant fails to live up to Michelin standards, it can lose a star.
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That reversal can be devastating. In 2016, New Yorker magazine wrote about restaurant industry speculation that Benoît Violier, a French-born chef of Restaurant de l’Hôtel de Ville in Switzerland, took his own life over the possibility of losing a star. It’s not an isolated incident. In 2003, New Yorker writes, the possibility of losing his restaurant’s third star haunted French chef Bernard Loiseau, who killed himself (his restaurant kept the star but lost it in 2016).
Those are extreme cases, unlikely tragedies fueled by other anxieties. But this year’s ceremony at LoanDepot Park marks the first time Miami chefs, whose restaurants earned stars for the first time in 2022, have had to feel the pressure.
And they’re feeling it.
Alex Meyer, who with his wife Luciana Giangrandi runs the tiny Boia De in Little Haiti, admitted that retaining the star has been on his mind.
“I do think we are feeling the pressure of maintaining it,” he said. “To lose a star, that’s a headline. I’ve seen it happen in New York and Los Angeles to friends. It’s a pretty big blow. For me and Luci, [winning a star] was such a boon for business that losing it would be almost an equally large hit to the business.”
Michelin inspectors judge restaurants on five main criteria, an anonymous inspector told the Miami Herald in 2022: quality of the products used; each dish’s mastery of flavor; the chefs’ mastery of cooking techniques; personality of the chef as displayed in the food; and the consistency of menu items between visits.
Consistency is the tricky element, Ford said, because having an off night or a kitchen mishap with a secret inspector in the house could happen to anyone.
“I know we have great nights, phenomenal nights, when we nailed it,” he said. “But some days unforeseeable things happen in a restaurant, and if they happen on a night you’re being inspected. . . .”
His strategy has been to focus his team on doing what they all love: “trying to evoke emotion through the food and the experience. I don’t think the pressure is ever going to leave us, whether we lose our star or not, but we’re always going to try and tell our story through the produce we get from Homestead or the fish from the local guy who’s going out every day. We focus on our core values.”
Mahmood Abousalem, vice president of Plan Do See Hospitality, which manages the starred The Den at Azabu in Miami Beach, understands the pain of losing a star all too well. The Den in New York earned a star and held it for seven years, then lost it. Now the hospitality group is working hard to win it back.
“Last year was a very exciting moment for us and our brand,” he said of the Miami Beach restaurant’s star. “But literally the next day, we started planning. With Michelin comes a huge responsibility. There is no guarantee you keep that star after a year. So we ask, ‘What do we have to do to retain or elevate that star?’ ”
For Absousalem, there are a few answers to that question: constant communication with the restaurant team and the vendors in Japan who provide fish, frequent tastings, more training, constant checking of products. He even traveled with The Den’s chef Chef Atsushi Okawara to dine at various Michelin restaurants “to make sure his creative juices keep flowing.”
Michael Beltran, owner and chef behind the starred Ariete in Coconut Grove, concentrates his team on the strengths that earned his restaurant the recognition last year.
“This industry is already stressful, and the stress last year was pretty monumental,” said Beltran, whose restaurants Brasserie Laurel and The Gibson Room were added to the Michelin Guide earlier this year. “No one can give you a blueprint on how to win a star. We didn’t know if the plans we laid and all the things we put together were what the guide was looking for. Now, going into year two, we stuck by our guns, and I think Ariete improved day over day, week over week.
“I asked every person in the kitchen why they started cooking, and not one person said it was to win a Michelin star. It’s important to remember that. You can’t let the anxiety get the better of you. If what we do doesn’t work this year, we go to work the next day and try again.”
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