Michelin 2009: the 100th edition of the Michelin France guide
The Michelin France guide is celebrating its 100th edition in 2009. But note that this is not its 100th anniversary, which it celebrated some years back. The guide was created in 1900 and was originally designed to make travelling easier for the then limited number of motorists (barely 2,900 of them) on France’s roads. At the time these intrepid travellers were primarily concerned with knowing where they would find the closest petrol station (sometimes, for example, at a baker’s) and how to deal with a breakdown or change a tyre... a Michelin one, of course. This gap of nine years compared with the anniversary is due to the fact that the Michelin Guide was not published during the two world wars, nor in 1921, when it was replaced by the publication of a collection of illustrated guides, Battlefields, to promote "pilgrimages" to regions devastated by the First World War, in memory of all those who had fallen on the field of honour, and to help people understand their actions in the combat zones.
The Guide was the brainchild of brothers Edouard and André Michelin, who at the time were running the Manufacture de Caoutchouc, the rubber factory that opened in Clermont-Ferrand in 1889. Both men had a firm belief in the future of the car, which was then in its infancy, and the little red Guide that was to immortalise their name, "offered free to drivers", was designed to make it easier for travellers to get around... and therefore promote sales of Michelin tyres. "This book is being published as the new century dawns, and it will last just as long," says the foreword to this first volume, published in a run of nearly 35,000 copies in August 1900 and distributed free to garages and tyre retailers. A new edition of the guide was to appear every year, providing drivers with all the practical information they needed to run and repair their car, and helping them to find "somewhere to stay and a place to eat." This was still a long way away from the "stars" that did not appear until the end of the 1920s and which would later become the hugely sought-after spearhead of the Michelin guide, attracting massive amounts of media coverage.
Racines Nomades, the Michelin France guide as a "work of art"
designed specially for the 100th edition© Fernando Barata - Guide Michelin
As far as publicity was concerned, the guide had a considerable advantage right from the outset: Bibendum, the "Michelin Man" in white rubber invented in 1898 for the newly-opened Michelin factory by the illustrator O’Galop (the pseudonym of painter and cartoonist Marius Rossillon), whose popularity continued to grow - to such an extent that it was awarded the "Logo of the Century" prize in 2000.
Even in its first edition, the guide used the visual and universal "language" of pictograms, those well-known little symbols that have contributed greatly to the identity of the Michelin guide and which have reflected not only the modernisation of the French hotel industry but also changes in society over the course of a century, from lavatories and candles to Internet connections. A new concern emerged as one of the selection criteria in the early 1930s: peace and quiet.
The first guide to a place outside of France was published in 1904, in Belgium. This opened the way to a collection of publications for other countries which, by the end of 2008, had expanded to become a list of 26 guides covering 23 countries, including the People’s Republic of China, with the publication of the Hong-Kong-Macao guide in Chinese and English. The main landmarks outside Europe of the Michelin guide’s international dimension began in the United States, with the arrival of the New York guide in 2005, followed by San Francisco in 2006 and by Los Angeles and Las Vegas in 2007. The guide’s first appearance in Asia was for Tokyo in 2007 (in Japanese and English), followed by China in 2008.
As far as translations are concerned, the first edition of the Michelin France guide in English was published on 15 July 1908, with Bibendum guiding readers through a six-page glossary to help English speakers get by in all kinds of situation. By 1911, six guides had been translated into English, in what Michelin termed a "monumental" success: stacked on top of each other, they would have been 60 times taller than St Paul’s cathedral in London! These were the guides to the British Isles, France, Germany and the Alps/Rhine (both also published in German), Spain/Portugal (also published in Spanish) and the Mediterranean countries of the Sun (Southern Italy, Sicily, Corsica and the French Riviera, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt).
These were all still being distributed free of charge. In 1920, however, the guide went on sale for the first time. On a visit to a tyre distributor, much to his indignation André Michelin had found the guides being used to wedge the legs of a workbench. From that day on he decided the guides would be sold, because "people only really respect the things they pay for." It was also a welcome boost to the brothers’ finances, because in 1908 they had stopped accepting the profitable hotel advertising that had worked so successfully for the Michelin guide since 1901. It was important that Bibendum, the great travel adviser, should not be suspected of being both judge and jury, as readers of the guide might fear. Readers’ own opinions had also featured very early on, with motorists being asked to fill out detailed questionnaires even in the very first guide. "Without them," said the Michelin brothers in their foreword, "we can do nothing. With them, we can do everything." In some ways, then, they were the distant relatives of the formidable group of inspectors who, half a century later, would have the world of gastronomy quaking in its boots...
The first "star for fine dining" for restaurants listed in the guide appeared in 1926. The second and third stars appeared in 1931 for the provinces and in 1933 for Paris. Bibendum was now given a chef’s hat to help gourmets decide where they would like to eat: one star meant "a very good restaurant in its category", two stars were "worth a detour" and three stars "worth a special trip". The psychological impact was considerable and, soon, each year when the new Michelin guide came out, practically all the talk was about the stars, which every chef coveted, hoping to move up a grade. The doyen of Michelin-starred chefs in France has had his three stars for 44 years!
History has sometimes had something unexpected up its sleeve: the guide was not published during either the First or Second World Wars, for example. In spring 1944, however, for the landings of the American troops in Normandy, the Allied headquarters feared that their progress into French towns and cities would be hampered by the fact that the occupying forces had destroyed all the road signs. The latest edition of the guide, from 1939, was reproduced in Washington with the agreement of the Michelin management, for the hundreds of precious town plans it contained. The Guides were distributed to officers and marked "For official use only". After the liberation of Paris, over two million maps of northern and eastern France, Belgium and Germany were printed and supplied to the Allies to make their progress easier. Another major historical event was the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, necessitating a complete redevelopment of the German guide to incorporate the vast area of East Germany.
The 2009 Michelin guide, which like the Paris guide is published in both French and English, lists 26 3-star restaurants, 73 with two stars and 449 with one star, plus 527 "Bib-gourmands", a special designation for restaurants offering an excellent quality-price ratio.
The Michelin galaxy around the world is made up of 73 "three stars", 26 in France and 47 in 11 other countries, including nine in Germany and Japan, six in Spain and the United States and five in Italy. But be careful of the duplicates! The most "starred" man in the world, a French chef, of course, has a total of 25 stars to his name, twinkling in several countries including China, Japan and the United States, where he officiates along with his disciples, most of whom are former pupils. There are currently 72 "three star" chefs in the world.
For this 100th edition, 100 established artists and art school students, selected by competition, have reinterpreted the cover of the Michelin France guide to create guides that are also "works of art".
Claudine Canetti
Source: Actualité en France n° 13, April 2009
Print version
Facts and figures, leading indicators