French Lessons (24 page)

Beneath each listed place was its distance by road from the hub of the
universe, Paris, or from the closest large town. The number of inhabitants was
also recorded, although I’ve never worked out why that should be of any
particular interest to motorists. And on every one of those cramped,
old-fashioned pages can be seen early examples of a visual vocabulary that is
now in its second century, Michelin sign language: a miniature château to
indicate a hotel, a first-aid cross for a resident doctor, a set of apothecary
scales for a pharmacy, a tiny envelope for a post office, a steam engine for a
station—even a black lozenge for hotels equipped with photographic
darkrooms.

Darkrooms were rare, and apparently so were some other less
artistic refinements. A note in the foreword tells the traveler that next
year’s guide would come to grips with the gurgling wonders of
twentieth-century plumbing. Not only would hotels be credited for having
bathrooms and showers, but also
“si les W.C. sont perfectionés
avec un appareil de chasse
”—
if they have lavatories
that flush—those, too, would be given the prominence they deserve.

Readers of that first guide were invited to write to Michelin with their
comments, and they could hardly fail to have been impressed by the fund of
technical and geographical information contained in the little book. But how
many of them, I wonder, wrote in to ask that burning question so close and dear
to any French heart at any time, but even more so after a hard day on the road.
What’s for dinner?

Because although hotels were listed,
restaurants weren’t. The guide was, after all, intended to be a survival
manual for motorists driving primitive machinery that frequently broke down. A
man whose valves and grommets were giving him trouble could hardly be expected
to give much thought or attention to a menu. Heretical though it may sound, in
those early years, mechanics were more important than chefs.

This
changed by 1920. Cars had become more reliable and pneumatic tires were no
longer the novelty they had been twenty years before. Food, however, would
never lose its charm, and perhaps it was this that prompted the Michelin
brothers to make three fundamental—and, as it turned out, very
astute—decisions about their guide that year: It should include
restaurants; it should be sold in bookstores, rather than be given away; and it
should no longer accept advertising.

It wasn’t long before the
restaurant listings, not surprisingly, began to overtake tips on tire pressure
as a reason for buying the guide. Every year, more restaurants were included,
and naturally—like everything in France, from suppositories to
gravel—they had to be graded. More sign language was needed to identify
the different levels of cooking skill—a short, simple way to let the
wandering motorist know what he could expect to find on his plate. And not only
What’s for dinner?
but also
How good will it be?
To
answer these questions, the star system was born in 1926.

The Michelin
stars, stylized rosettes that are called “macaroons” by the pros of
the industry, are the gold medals of kitchen Olympics. They are awarded,
confirmed, or withdrawn every year. Winning a star can lift a young chef from
obscurity overnight, giving him (or, less frequently, her) a reputation that
extends to wherever the guide is sold and food is discussed. Losing a star is
catastrophique,
a professional disaster, a personal tragedy, a reason
to smite the forehead, tear out the hair, and consider taking up a less
demanding occupation.

What has always struck me about these annual
dramas, which are widely reported in France, is that, in the most important
sense, the decisions made by the guide are accepted. People may
disagree—in fact, as it is France and as it concerns the stomach, they
invariably
do
disagree—about a star being given or taken away.
But I have never known anyone to accuse the guide of unfairness or bias. It is
trusted. I find this remarkable in a world where corruption is constantly being
uncovered and is now more or less taken for granted in every activity from
politics to bicycle racing.

One of the reasons the guide has managed to
retain its virtue as well as its authority is the self-imposed ban on
advertising that is now in its eighty-first year. Thanks to that ban, the guide
contains none of the corporate graffiti that decorates almost everything we
watch or read. I can think of hundreds of companies that would fall over
themselves to advertise in the guide’s closely studied pages: anyone
selling food, drink, travel, kitchen equipment, cars, indigestion remedies,
wonder diets—the list is long, and potentially very, very lucrative. The
Michelin people could make a fortune. It does them credit that they prefer to
maintain their independence and keep the guide commercial-free.

But the
real strength of the guide is its system of restaurant evaluation, and the
mysterious band of men and women who work within that system. These are the
inspectors,
les incognitos,
whose names are never announced, whose
photographs are never taken, and whose considerable talents are only recognized
by a few souls of discretion in the Michelin head office.

The
inspectors’ method of working is a complete contradiction of the tactics
normally practiced by food critics, who, with one or two exceptions, know more
about self-promotion than cooking. Most food critics, I suspect, want to be
known, to be recognized, to be stroked, to feel that their names send a frisson
of apprehension up and down the chef’s spine. A measure of celebrity, and
the special attention it generates, is what they like when they eat. And
restaurants should behave accordingly, if they know what’s good for them.
Waiters, many waiters, should flurry around. New off-menu dishes should be sent
to the table for sampling. Chefs should drop by at the end of the meal to give
away recipe secrets that will be published in the eventual review as the
critic’s own expert and perceptive discoveries. “To my surprise, I
detected a daring but successful touch of truffled apricots in the galantine of
pork.” That sort of thing.

In contrast, the Michelin
inspector’s approach to a restaurant is the same as that of any normal
customer. When he makes his reservation, his name doesn’t ring any bells
in the kitchen. (Even France’s highly tuned network of gossip among chefs
hasn’t yet managed to identify inspectors, for reasons we shall come to
later.) When the inspector arrives at the restaurant, he continues to make
himself unknown. He doesn’t ask for any particular table. He
doesn’t drop any hints to the headwaiter. He doesn’t demand to meet
the chef. He eats, he drinks, he pays his bill, and he leaves. And nobody in
the restaurant, or the kitchen, is any the wiser.

There are
people—my friend Régis, the glutton in chief, is one—who
will tell you that eating for a living is as close as one can reasonably come
to heaven on earth. He thinks he would love to be a Michelin inspector. And on
the face of it, a career of being fed and watered by some of the world’s
best cooks does sound more attractive than chartered accountancy or commodities
trading or, indeed, most other jobs. But is it? Does our inspector spring from
his bed salivating every morning? Does he have a remedy for the gourmet’s
occupational ailment, the
crise de foie
? Where does he eat on his days
off? Is he fat? I thought it would be fascinating to find out. And since I
didn’t know an inspector, or anybody who knew one, I decided that the
only place to go for enlightenment was to taste bud headquarters, the Michelin
office in Paris.

It is on the wide and leafy avenue de Breteuil in the
seventh arrondissement, a ten-minute stroll from my favorite food shop, the Bon
Marché Grande Epicerie on the rue du Bac. The Michelin building is set
back from the street, functional and unremarkable, guarded by a sentry box
where visitors are required to state their business before being allowed in. My
appointment was with Monsieur Arnaud, one of whose burdens in life it is to
deal with nosy interlopers like myself.

He met me in the reception
area, a dark-haired, distinguished man with a diplomatic air, and led me
through a labyrinth of corridors to a small book-lined office. He gave me a
shot of triple-strength coffee before asking how he could help.

“I’m fascinated by your team of inspectors,” I said.

He nodded amiably. I had the feeling this wasn’t the first time
he’d heard that.

“And what I’d really like is to have
lunch with one of them.”

The Arnaud eyebrows went up. The Arnaud
lips were pursed. “That, I’m afraid, would be very
difficult.”

“How about dinner?”

He smiled and
shook his head. I didn’t think it was worth suggesting breakfast.

“The problem is,” Arnaud said, “that our inspectors must
remain anonymous if they are to do their job properly.”

I told
him I had no wish to blow an inspector’s cover, but Arnaud remained
adamant—polite, friendly, understanding, but adamant. It couldn’t
be done. And then he explained why.

Inspecting restaurants for Michelin
is not an occasional diversion for people with an educated palate who like to
eat, but a full-time, long-term, salaried career. Inspectors have usually had
eight to ten years of experience working in the hotel or restaurant
business—“a basic education,” Arnaud called it—before
joining Michelin. Then there is a training period of two years before they go
out on the road to eat in earnest.

And when they do go out on the road,
they’re kept hard at it, weekends included: two meals a day, but never at
the same type of restaurant, so that a two-star lunch may be followed by dinner
in a bistro. During a typical week, inspectors will sample ten to fourteen
kinds of cuisine. Two weeks of this, and then they will go back to Paris to
write their reports. To make sure their faces don’t become familiar in
one particular area, they constantly switch regions, traveling about twenty
thousand miles a year. Every starred restaurant will be visited and reviewed
half a dozen times in the course of a year by different inspectors.

Reeling from this barrage of information, I asked what I thought was a
harmless question. “How many inspectors are there?”

Another
enigmatic smile. I was trying to venture into forbidden territory.
“Un certain nombre,”
said Arnaud. “Enough to do the
work.”

“And what do you look for in an
inspector?”

“Discretion, both in manner and appearance. We
don’t want anyone flamboyant, or too distinctive. We look for Monsieur
Tout le Monde, Mr. Everyman.”

That puts Régis out of the
running, I thought. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been swirling
through the village in a calf-length Tyrolean cloak, basketball boots, and a
wide-brim Borsalino fedora, his cigar belching chimney-sized puffs of smoke. He
is not the most unobtrusive of men.

Arnaud continued. “Inspectors
must, of course, be physically sound. They must have an exceptional sense of
taste, and this must be educated enough to recognize if a chef has taken
shortcuts. Or worse”—Arnaud’s expression became
grave—“if he has been cheating.” He paused to let this horror
sink in. “Disguised dishes,” he said. “Cod masquerading as
another fish under the cover of a distracting sauce. Mutton dressed up as lamb.
These things happen. Our man must be watchful. He must be able to see through
the disguise without having to question the chef. One can never question the
chef, because this is
un métier très
discret.
”

Discretion was a recurring theme, and indeed
Arnaud himself was proving to be as discreet as an oyster, although he did open
up a little when we talked about female inspectors. They often notice details,
he said, that men overlook. Only the other day he had been to lunch at a
starred restaurant with a female inspector colleague, Madame Tout le Monde. He
had found everything as it should be. Madame hadn’t. She had noticed that
one of the waiters had fingernails that were, shall we say, not quite comme il
faut, not quite in the state of blanched and spotless, buffed perfection that
they should be. Not the worst of crimes perhaps; not enough to strip away the
stars. But a black mark nevertheless, and something that would be on the
checklist for the next inspector.

There was no point, I knew, in asking
what inspectors said about their work to their friends. Presumably they
couldn’t admit the truth. Was there an approved Michelin cover story,
backed up by a fake office and a secretary trained in the arts of espionage?
Did the husbands and wives of inspectors know? What did they tell
their
friends? How did inspectors describe their occupation in the
endless forms that one is required to fill out in France? The more I thought
about it, the more it seemed like life in the witness protection program, but
with better food.

I left the Michelin building a
wiser man, any illusions I might have had about the joys of eating for a living
dispelled. An inspector’s life was not for me. In fact, it sounded like a
constant nightmare of self-restraint. There he is, our friend Monsieur Tout le
Monde, cast adrift every lunchtime in a sea of temptation—exquisite food,
fifty-page wine lists thick with cobwebbed treasures, deferential service,
comfortable surroundings, no pressing appointments except dinner that
evening—there he is, at the very pinnacle of civilized refreshment, and
what does duty require him to do? Hold back. Concentrate. Take mental notes.
Check the waiter’s fingernails. Keep a sharp eye out for disguised
dishes.
Work.

Even when I was in the advertising business
during those palmy days when the industry motto was “Let’s have
lunch!” and the road to success was strewn with menus, I was never able
to come to terms with the working lunch. For me, work and lunch are two
activities that were never meant to coexist and should never be forced to do
so. Lunch is—or it should be—a pleasure. The wine and conversation
should flow; the chef’s efforts should be given the attention they
deserve. Enjoyment should reign. How can this possibly happen if one is
expected to discuss sales and distribution plans or the latest surgings and
plummetings of the stock market, or even if, as with Monsieur Tout le Monde,
lunch is something to be analyzed, dissected, judged, and pigeonholed? It flies
in the face of nature. But although I could never do that, I am profoundly
grateful to those who can, because they have labored long and hard to produce
the definitive bible of the belly.