Jean-Luc Naret is the worldwide Director of Le Guide Michelin-truly the only go-to guide when it comes to rating restaurants. We caught up with him in San Francisco for a Q&A about Michelin’s quest for world restaurant guidebook domination:

John Curtas: In this time of instant gratification, text messaging and food bloggers, how does the Michelin Guide compete for the attention of the restaurant-going public?

Jean-Luc Naret: The more people paying attention to food and restaurants the better. It’s all good for gastronomy. We think that they will always end up coming to our guide because we hope we are thought of as the final word in restaurant ratings, and we certainly feel that we have the respect of the best chefs from around the world.

JC: How do you feel about other rating systems like Restaurant Magazine’s Top 50 Restaurants in the World or Steve Plotnicki’s The 100 Best Restaurants of North America and Europe (full disclosure: I am one of the voters for Restaurant Magazine’s yearly survey)? Do you take them seriously or think of them as publicity stunts?

JLN: Everyone has the right to judge these things and do their own list. I read with a lot of respect all these magazines including the Top 50 Restaurants in the World. This year (in France) we asked food writers/critics to tell us who deserves three-stars among French restaurants, because it looks like Michelin is becoming the international reference for gastronomy. We see and hear (writers) saying “we don’t believe (a restaurant is) worth three stars” and mentioning certain restaurants, and then we have chefs who tell us that those journalists haven’t been in their restaurant in 5 or 7 years and sometimes never.

JC: Just like El Bulli winning the top restaurant three years in a row even when it’s only open 6 months a year and reservations are practically impossible?

JLN: I used to run a hotel that got mentioned as one of the top 50 hotels in the world, and the next year a hotel in Bali with only 5 bungalows got the award as the best in the world. How many people could ever even see it, much less stay there? People just hear it’s good and then vote for it. Another example is when JoJo (in New York) lost a Michelin star a couple of years ago. They called us and wanted to know how they could improve. The next year, they regained that star after our inspectors went back 6 times (anonymously). When Frank Bruni reviewed it in the New York Times, he was surprised that they had regained a star, and mentioned that he had last been there 5 years earlier. Our stars are awarded based upon what we find there, after multiple visits, every single year.

JC: Speaking of inspectors, how many do you employ in America?

JLN: 10 full time inspectors covering New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

JC: And speaking of Los Angeles, how would you compare the way you were treated by the press in Tokyo (where Michelin awarded 8 restaurants the coveted three stars) versus LA (where non were found)?

JLN: They really are two different worlds. When we first started in Los Angeles, everyone was saying we weren’t going to find any 3-star restaurants. We didn’t want to disappoint anyone so we looked but couldn’t find one…so when we published we didn’t get a very nice reception from the local LA media. But there are really no 3 star restaurants there even today.

JC: Things were different in Tokyo?

JLN: In Tokyo, people were enthusiastic even before the launch. We published our guide at midnight, and by the next day they were all sold out (120,000 copies). With 150 starred restaurants we really put Tokyo on the map of the world’s gastronomy.

JC: Why and how did Tokyo leap ahead of so many of the world’s cities?

JLN: There are over 150,000 restaurants in Tokyo. Paris only has 13,000. Passion for food is very evolved. Their gastronomic traditions date from 17th century when restaurants started in Kyoto and then moved to Tokyo. They use the best products from the mountains and the sea and change everything every month to get the best products. Some chefs have unique access to products that no one else has. The 3 star restaurants run from Joel Robuchon to an underground sushi bar with only 10 seats that is the best sushi restaurant in the world.

JC: What do you foresee for fine dining in this economic downturn?

JLN: The rich seem to always be getting richer, so there will always be a place for the best, high-end restaurants. The trend in Europe is now to find small, modest places with great chefs cooking with lots of local products. Places that feature a high level of cooking at a fair price. These are the places that will do well.

JC: And what do you see happening in Vegas?

JLN: Las Vegas has been about having a well-known name on the door, but that means nothing to us. In fact some of the Las Vegas restaurants like Le Cirque, received a star when their better-known original restaurants did not. To us it’s not based upon a famous name. All that matters is who’s actually cooking there and what’s on the plate. And by the way, I just visited Macau and I can definitely say that I now appreciate the original Las Vegas even more.

There are five Michelin 3-Star restaurants in America. Joel Robuchon in the MGM Grand Hotel is one of them. Unlike many of his colleagues, JR is in his restaurant and at the stoves just about every third month in Las Vegas. We sat down (after begging off 16 courses and settling for a 12 course meal there recently) to ask The Chef of the 20th Century (as proclaimed by Gault-Millau in 1996), about his cuisine and restaurants in the era of the restaurant/food blogger.

Click here to hear my review of Joel Robuchon on KNPR.

Click here to read my review of Joel Robuchon for John Mariani.

JC: What is your opinion of food/restaurant bloggers and the impact they have on the dining-out public?

JR: They can be helpful and they can be dangerous. Dangerous because anyone can write anything, even if they have no training or experience and don’t make any sense. Genuine gastronomic critics bring a lot of experience to the table and you must respect that, but too often the internet can be used as a revenge tool by people who have something against the chef or the restaurant. But the public doesn’t know when a “review” is being used as a way to ambush a restaurant. Too many restaurant “critics” these days are like me when I’m criticizing a soccer coach; I might have my opinion, but I don’t know that much.

JC: How would you advise someone to get a proper gourmet education in this era of very expensive restaurants (like his) and various cooking/restaurant styles?

JR: You must go out a lot. Try different concepts. Form a fine dining club. Try get a true understanding of what is good and bad cooking. Follow a gastronomic critic whose tastes you understand and learn from them. Unfortunately, people don’t take the time these days to become a true gourmand.

JC: What advice would you give a young chef (or a young restaurant customer) about what to strive for in good cooking and good eating?

JR: Young people/children have an inherent honesty and respect for what is good in food. But as they get older, from 18-35 yrs. old, they tend to over think things…which is the most dangerous thing you can do as a chef. Young chefs try too hard to impress and constantly want their food to be exciting, but that doesn’t mean it’s any good. Too often they get lost in the method and end up overcomplicating things. Doing a simple thing well and perfectly, is what great cooking is all about.

JC: Name me a restaurant that I’ve never heard of that I absolutely must go to?

JR: Restaurante Nou Manolin in Alicante, Spain, in Valencia. A tapas/small plates/seafood restaurant with amazing Mediterranean seafood and langoustines….

Charlie Trotter may be the most intellectual of the American chefs who
rose to prominence over the past twenty years, but that doesn’t mean he
lacks a sense of humor. Open only one night, we found him working the
rooms of Restaurant Charlie and Bar Charlie with the ease of Wayne
Newton charming the Depends off Sun City socialites. His fine-tuned
food was too hip for the room when he first tested the Vegas waters(?)
in 1994, but he’s back, and riding the current wave of Big Kahuna
restaurants spawning in (wait for it) the deep end of the Palazzo’s
restaurant pool. His menu of (mostly) swimmers, crustaceans and
bivalves can be sampled a la carte (unlike 14 years ago), and Bar
Charlie is right next door for those whose tastes run to the
experimental, the Asian and the au courant. Try to pick a foie gras
fight, and Charlie will win you he’s a libertarian about such things. Try to find anything wrong with the
knife work of Executive Chef Hiroo Nagana (creating mini-masterpieces
at Bar Charlie) and you won’t be able to.

Here is my interview with Charlie Trotter that was previously posted on Eaterla.com:

THE COMEBACK KID

By all accounts, Charlie Trotter should be as fond of Vegas as PETA is of prime rib. His eponymous restaurant flamed out famously in 1995, after 15 months in the MGM Grand. Bloodied but unbowed, he maintained his flagship in Chicago while (apparently) plotting a return to the High Desert whenever the time was right for a return bout. He doesn’t seem to have the empire-building urges of many of his colleagues- Cabo San Lucas houses his only other outpost-so when word got out that the Palazzo was granting him a rematch, gourmands and bean-counters alike wondered if he was punch drunk. With this in mind, we grabbed him for a Q & A just two days into the life of Restaurant Charlie and Bar Charlie.

John Curtas: It was a sad day for local gourmands when you pulled up stakes here in 1995. The smart money said we’d never see you again. What happened then and now?

Charlie Trotter: We started out as an all-comp restaurant for high rollers exclusively. It really went much smoother than people think it did. Sure, there were occasional requests for prime ribs and baked potatoes, but we handled them and it was never an issue as got reported at the time.

JC: The rumors were that no one could touch the sacred food of such a renowned chef (serving only rigid, degustation menus every night), and you balked at the low-to-middlebrow tastes of the casino crowd and couldn’t take it anymore.

CT: The real issue was a new management team took over the MGM and wanted to double our size (from 65 seats), change our menu, eliminate the tasting menu and add more “basic” food like meatloaf and spaghetti and meatballs, and we did balk at that. But until that happened, we were happy. I was the one who talked Emeril into opening in the MGM. I had a 10 year contract to be there and was happy with it right up until the point that (the Food and Beverage people) began wanting to tell me what I should serve. They ended up buying me out of my deal after 15 months, so I was happy with that too.

JC: So how is this time going to be different?

CT: We’ve had lots of offers over the years; the Bellagio, Wynn, but nothing seemed like a good fit until now. Rob Goldstein (President of the Venetian) is a passionate food guy and he and his people really seem to understand what we’re trying to do. Bar Charlie will revisit some of our ideas from 14 years ago, and the main restaurant will be a la carte, so I guess we’re trying two concepts in one this time.

JC: And if I’d like a silky-smooth, Sauterne-poached slab of foie gras…..?

CT: Look, I’m the most libertarian guy you’ll ever meet. I really am a live and let live person….not a polemic about foie gras, smoking in restaurants or anything else. Eight years ago we just decided not to serve it and a couple of reporters came in, we said we just weren’t doing it anymore, and then they went out and got other chef’s reactions to create the “controversy.” I also stopped people from smoking in my restaurant 20 years ago, and that was controversial then too….even though we didn’t make any announcements about it….it was just something we decided we didn’t want in our environment. What other people eat and what other restaurants serve is their business not mine.