Last night, Manchester didn’t get any new Michelin stars. Chef Simon Martin’s Ancoats restaurant Mana, which won the city its first new Michelin star in 40 years, retained its star but wasn’t awarded a second. And the renowned tyre company didn’t deem any other restaurant worthy of its first.
This is not for a lack of deserving talent. Far from it. Stockport’s Where The Light Gets In, headed up by founder Sam Buckley and his very gifted team, received a ‘green star’ last year, for recognition of its sustainability. It turned out not to be the precursor to its first ‘proper’ star, at least not this year.
Adam Reid at The French also didn’t get a star, despite many thinking he’s long overdue for one. But then again, Simon Rogan also didn’t snag a star while he was cooking there, and he now has three at his restaurant L’Enclume in the Lake District, and another at Rogan & Co, also down the road in Cartmel.
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To put into a bit of context, Birmingham has five Michelin starred restaurants, and as of last night, so does Edinburgh. London, meanwhile, has a rather out of reach 74.
There’s other Michelin-quality cooking in the city. Erst, also in Ancoats, might not be typical of the kind of place that gets a star. Perhaps the cooking is too ‘simple’, lacking the foams, the nitrogen, the bells and the whistles.
Newly opened Higher Ground boasts three founders with a wealth of experience in Michelin-starred restaurants from New York to Copenhagen. They proved just what could be done with no kitchen equipment to speak of (a pressure cooker and a sandwich press) at their informal bar Flawd.
Another Hand on Deansgate Mews is producing hugely impressive food. So is the newly opened Climat. MUSU, the Japanese-inspired restaurant on Bridge Street, is the project of chef-patron Michael Shaw, who worked at the two-star Le Manoir aux Quat'Saison with the legendary Raymond Blanc.
The talent is in the city. But so far, the stars are not. But should we even care? Over the years there have even been chefs who have ‘returned’ their stars, notably Marco Pierre-White, the youngest chef ever to win three stars, winning them in 1994 and then giving them back again in 1999.
Others followed suit, wishing to get off the three-star merry-go-round and all the pressure that comes with it.
Observer restaurant critic and regular Masterchef judge Jay Rayner had a healthy take on the situation when we interviewed him at Erst, one of his favourite Manchester restaurants, earlier this month.
"I have to say, that has always baffled me, this sense that a city hasn’t got something to be proud of unless it has a Michelin-starred restaurant - it’s always left me cold," he told us.
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"I’m not commenting on Mana as I haven't been, but this whole thing of a star for Manchester, what does it really say about your city? Nothing really, because the strength of a gastro-culture is not made by one restaurant, it’s made by 15 bistros.
“A city with 15 bistros you really want to go to is so much more interesting than one with one restaurant where they’ve learnt to iron the napkins and blow air into their vegetable foam."
He’s probably onto something, not to mention the fact that, in a cost of living crisis, should we be turning food into foam any more than we should be sending people into space?
Like everything, there’s clearly an economic slant to all this. Hospitality is being hammered more than any other industry at the moment, with VAT, business rates and costs of everything from paper napkins to cooking oil doubling, even tripling.
Maybe keeping the door open, the suppliers paid and your chefs and waiting staff in a job is more important than chasing accolades. But perhaps it’s not quite as simple as that.
With a Michelin star comes opportunity. Joel Robuchon, one of the most celebrated chefs of all time, who has held 32 stars across various restaurants around the world, noted the economic value of the Michelin star.
“With one Michelin star, you get about 20 percent more business,” he told Food & Wine in 2017. “Two stars, you do about 40 percent more business, and with three stars, you'll do about 100 percent more business. So from a business point... you can see the influence of the Michelin guide.”
With Michelin stars also comes tourism. Before Rene Redzepi won three stars for at his pioneering restaurant Noma in Copenhagen, the city’s food culture contributed little to the city’s economy. Now it has a staggering 15 restaurants with stars, and is among the most visited food destinations on the planet.
The restaurant economy in the city grew from the equivalent of £1.1 billion to £5.4 billion in the space of four years, thanks in no small part to Michelin stars, or at least a scene that Michelin stars helped to create.
So yes, the value of Michelin stars - particularly multiple Michelin stars - is not to be underestimated in terms of both prestige in the world of dining, and also the potentially huge boost to the economy that comes with it.
But at the same time, do we need stars on doors to validate what we already know to be a vibrant, ever-changing restaurant scene? We’ll find out again this time next year.
Does Manchester deserve another Michelin star?
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