Mouthing Off | Like with Canada, Michelin’s Malaysia guide again shows it has no place judging countries where it doesn’t understand the local cuisine
- Michelin’s new Malaysia guide – for Kuala Lumpur and Penang – awarded just four stars while shoehorning in hawker stalls alongside luxury restaurants
- It’s not just in Asia – in Toronto, Michelin inspectors completely bypassed the city’s best restaurants serving ethnic minority cuisines
The Michelin guide continued its frivolous expansion to places that really didn’t need it over the past year.
Like a refrigerator brand opening a new office in the Arctic, Michelin in mid-December launched its restaurant recommendations guide for Malaysia, a country with fantastic food but no tradition of the fine dining that Michelin traditionally adores.
To adjust for the local palate, they tried to shoehorn hawker-stall specialities into their criteria (as they have done in Singapore) alongside luxury restaurants.
The result is a book with no definable readership. People who look for posh service aren’t seeking it in tropical Southeast Asian countries. As for folks who want suggestions for the best bak kut teh (pork ribs soup), they’re not going to look at Michelin. They’ll ask their taxi driver.
Michelin’s insistence on sticking its thumb into dishes it has no place judging just invites criticism of overreaching and elitism.