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.
What else are we supposed to think when just four restaurants received one star in the Malaysia guide? Of them, two are classic French eateries (DC by Darren Chin and Au Jardin) and two do haute local cuisine amid modern decor (Dewakan and Auntie Gaik Lean’s Old School Eatery).
France currently has 436 Michelin-star restaurants. Hong Kong has 71.
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Michelin obviously cannot ignore hawker stalls, so some of these tiny outlets get a pat on the head in the form of a Bib Gourmand tag or a mere listing mention.
The whole exercise is patronising enough, except it’s worse when you consider Michelin requires a considerable financial contribution from each partner city. For the 2023 Malaysia guide, those included just Kuala Lumpur and Penang.
Similarly, a Michelin guide released in autumn 2022 for Canada focused only on the cities of Toronto and Vancouver.
It’s curious that they completely bypassed Montreal, which many would argue possesses some of the country’s coolest and best eateries. Could they not find inspectors willing to speak Quebecois? Or was Montreal just not willing to cough up the lunch money?
Toronto is a great cosmopolitan city, but its forefathers are far too Protestant for French gastronomic hedonism. They tend to labour for plain, frugal plates of food, not ostentatious multi-courses of seafood, meat and dessert.
Torontonians generally find fine dining uncomfortable. They don’t want a server constantly hovering, changing the cutlery, brushing crumbs off the table, or neatly placing the napkin on their lap. Instead of saying “thank you”, diners might be inclined to apologise to the waiter.
Canadians are also far too casual to sit for such extended service. It’s a culture of hoodies, sweaters and jeans, not formal wear and tuxedos. With six months of winter, they’d rather have a dinner party at home than dress up to go out in the snow.
In the inaugural guide, 12 Toronto spots were awarded stars and only one eatery – a sushi restaurant with an imported chef (Sushi Masaki Saito) – achieved two stars. Does that mean Toronto has a lesser restaurant scene than Hong Kong?
Well, that’s something I would never say. It wouldn’t be accurate. Toronto has an extraordinary range of restaurants featuring numerous cuisines not readily found in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong might have an advantage with our vast Asian repertoire, but Toronto’s multicultural municipalities offer extraordinary Polish food, marvellous Cuban delights, great Jamaican jerk barbecues, moreish Turkish fare, and hearty Jewish deli sandwiches.
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With so many immigrants from the Asian diaspora, the Asian cuisine is not bad either.
Are they of Michelin-star quality? I don’t know. I’m not even sure what Michelin qualifications are any more. But its inspectors seem to have as awkward a time adjudicating suburban Toronto ethnic diners as Penang hawker stalls.
You would think that a food guide started by a car tyre company would actually embrace driving to far-flung destinations.
