Food trends come and go; diners’ habits change and change again. The availability of ingredients and the accessibility of recipes and tutorials mean it’s truly possible to make every day gourmet.
Even with the evolution of the collective palette over the past century, one name has maintained authority over elevated dining: the Michelin Guide.
“It's something that said this is world-class cuisine,” said Catherine Neville, the St. Louis-based host of the PBS food show TasteMAKERS. “People travel specifically to go to a Michelin-starred restaurant. If you're truly a foodie, it's like a pilgrimage, in a way.”
But Neville and other St. Louisans will have to continue traveling outside the region to dine at a Michelin-starred restaurant. The company only looks at a relatively small selection of restaurants in the United States – and none in Missouri. Cities where the guide has most recently expanded made the map because their local tourism boards have paid for it.
“Michelin also doesn't scout a lot of places, so I don't see it as a true indicator of whether St. Louis restaurants are at a certain level of quality,” said Neville.
The star's power
If Michelin conjures an image of a puffy white automotive mascot – not travel for white tablecloth dining – here’s why that still tracks: The French tire company launched the guide in 1889 as a way to promote driving for leisure, including to restaurants. In the 1920s, the system of awarding stars was born. Today, achieving one, two or the top tier of three stars is still considered one of the highest culinary honors.
Neville said restaurant experiences will vary from country to country, from cuisine to cuisine. But the hallmark of a Michelin-starred restaurant is that it is about more than just the food.
“In general, it is a transporting experience that you can't have anywhere else,” she said.
According to the Michelin Guide, inspectors are trained to judge a restaurant based on a set of established criteria: quality of products, mastery of flavor and cooking techniques, the personality of the chef represented in the experience, harmony of flavors and consistency.
Each year, Michelin publishes a new list of star-earning restaurants and those that have earned a Bib Gourmand distinction, an award for lower price point restaurants not quite star-worthy but “definitely not a consolation prize,” according to Michelin. (The award is named for Bibendum, the formal name of the “Michelin Man.”)
The awards belong to the restaurant, not the chef or owner, and are up for reconsideration each year. In December’s list of star-earners in Chicago; Washington, D.C., and New York City, several restaurants were handed fewer stars than last year — or none at all.
Though Michelin also said its inspectors are anonymous, St. Louis restaurateur Tara Gallina said she’s confident none has entered her establishments – at least, not on official business.
“Over the years at Vicia, people will be like, 'Remind me, how many stars do you have again?' And I am like, oh my god, zero, but thank you,” she said and laughed.
She and her husband, chef Michael, own Vicia, a vegetable-forward dining room in the Central West End; Bistro La Floraison, a cozy French spot in Clayton, and several other brands under their Take Root Hospitality restaurant group. Its accolades include several James Beard Foundation award nominations, national publication write-ups, celebrity-chef shoutouts and continued local praise.
But they’re local to St. Louis, where Michelin doesn’t scout.
“That’s not even a thing here, but people just assume [inspectors] can go wherever they want,” said Gallina. “It really comes down to money.”
Pay to plate
In the past two years, local news sources have reported Colorado groups spent a collective $600,000 to entice scouts to check out a few cities in the state and consider awarding stars. Texas tourism associations spent a total of nearly $3 million for three years of star-chasing.
Michelin did not respond to STLPR’s requests for comment on this story, but spokespeople have insisted that the “pay to play” model is more of a partnership to offset the costs of the review process (since Michelin inspectors cannot accept free meals, for example) and that the company will “assess the maturity” of a region’s culinary scene before considering a partnership.
St. Louis native Logan Ely has cooked in Michelin-starred kitchens before opening his restaurants, which include Fox Park’s the Lucky Accomplice. While he shares plenty of respect for the distinction, he questions if that kind of money really makes sense.
“In a city like St Louis, you could drive around for 10 minutes and find 10 really good things to spend money on, from the city's perspective, whether it's like the police force, or schools, or kids, or the unhoused or whatever,” he said. “There would be a handful of places that get a star, for sure, but does that bring in more money? I don’t know.”
It’s a sentiment several others shared off the record: that St. Louisans might not have an appetite for spending any amount of money on something akin to the Michelin Guide.
Others said that certain safety and infrastructure improvements on the neighborhoods surrounding their restaurants would have a bigger impact on business than receiving a star.
Marketing without Michelin
Neville, the international foodie, is also the founder of local food publication Sauce Magazine and now works as Vice President of Communications for Explore St. Louis. It’s her job to help get the word out about reasons for people from around the region to come visit — and go out to eat.
“We market St Louis in a number of different ways, and food is one of them,” she said. “One hundred percent, St. Louis is a food city, and I think that all you have to do is just step into one of our great restaurants, and it's apparent.”
She said that involves traditional marketing – “traditional, paid advertising, television, Meta, Google, all of that kind of jazz” — plus a lot of outreach to the other reputable journalists, publications and travel authorities who are most likely to award designations like “hidden gem” and “worth a visit.”
Much of that marketing is targeted at visitors within a five-hour drive. But the message, Neville said, is equally important for the people who live in the area.
“I think we need to kind of reexamine the value of what the vibrant culinary community brings to St. Louis and understand why supporting that community by getting out of our PJs and getting out of our houses and going out and raising a glass together at a table in a restaurant,” she said. “Whether it's Clayton or Chesterfield or the Hill or Central West End: All of that adds up to a vibrant region. It goes beyond just going out to dinner.”
Collaboration, not competition
If word got out and Michelin decided to scrap the business model and scout St. Louis without incentive? Gallina said she would play along.
“Reluctantly,” she added. “But, I can't predict the future, but I would love for it to stay kind of special and unique the way that it is.”
That’s because she said in the already high-pressure restaurant world, adding something like the Michelin guide risks devaluing what makes going out to eat so worth it.
“I don't know that we can ever be competitive with New York or L.A. or cities like that, but I don't know that we want to be either, because there's a lot that comes with that,” she said. She expects prices would go up, restaurants would be harder to get into, chefs would be less collaborative, and offerings would be less diverse — especially if fine dining worked to pivot to what’s usually considered “Michelin worthy.”
“The fact that we are a little scrappy, I think, is what makes most of the restaurants really good,” said Gallina. “You can take chances here, and you can take risks here that are much harder to take in larger markets.”
Ely agrees. He closed Lucky Accomplice after New Year's Eve service to reformat the space and concept — and it’s not the first time he’s taken on a creative reinvention, even amid critical acclaim.
“It’s fun to kind of come back and like, contribute and build up this area,” he said. “I’m constantly trying to think of, like, why did I even start cooking, right? Which is, I like feeding people.”
