Espresso: Will Storr, Why 3* Michelin Restaurants Have Completely Ruined Food

0:00Yes. Well, it's flavor, texture and temperature. was gross like it was awful and my wife couldn't even finish it and then and they kind of said to us obviously don't you like awful and she said no i don't mind it's just like it's just the texture is grainy and it was it was it felt like they were greatly offended that my wife was just refusing to uh play along with this mad what's what are some restaurants you really like in london in london do you go up to london much because you're ken on you but i'm ken yeah In London, as you can probably guess, I miss Gavroche. I used to like going to Gavroche because they specialised.

1:07And I interviewed him once, Michel Roux, and I said, because I used to have three-star, I went down to two. And I said, do you feel bad about missing the three-star? And he said, no, because if you do three-star, you've got to be all experimental. I don't want that. I want to do the classics. I want to do them perfectly. And if we do that, we're never going to get above two. I thought, well, that's fair enough. And so I love I love all that old fashioned pre-Nouvelle stuff. But in a non-Michelin space, I really like, you know, a restaurant called Blacklock in Soho. Mate. Yeah. The chops. Yeah.

1:41Yes. Really great. And, you know, like really inventive. I had they served me a crumpet with slow cooked lamb on top of it. It's unbelievably delicious. And there was a sweet potato that had been cooked over ash for 11 hours. I mean, just absolutely really interesting, unusual, a crumpet with meat on it. What? And then you poured gravy on it. It was great. And the sweet potato. Oh, I mean, you know. They do the quick one, guys. Espress has got a brand new sponsor, Unleashed. Unleashed is inventory management software that talks directly to your finance and econ software. We use Unleashed daily islands.

2:19I bloody love it. We've got our admin time in half, saving approximately 30K a year. why use it save money save headaches save stress get granular clarity on your margins know where your stock is don't miss availability look your favorite brands literally use unleashed as their backbone candy kittens tiny rebel trip always religiously look there's a link in the show notes please feel free to book a call with josh and his wonderful sales team at unleashed they're amazing even nothing comes of it and even better news you'll get your first month free if reference hungry thank you so i've been there a couple of times i walk out like a fat fuck like literally but like they do the cheesecake the vanilla cheesecake that's they come around and this is a great example of storytelling you know they can just give you a slice of cheesecake you know every other fucking restaurant they the guy comes around or the girl comes around with a big uh thing of cheesecake and they just go like that scoop how much do you want and i'm like but i'm just that's a beauty that i mean in food and restaurants so many things of of storytelling.

3:23But I'd love to know, so you talked about so I interview a lot of chefs and restaurants. We've got Black Bear Burger coming on. If you ever want a banging burger, go to Black Bear Burger. I'm going up to a pizza place called Vincenzo's next week to interview this pizza guy who's just went to New York, absorbed all the pizza culture. But what the founder of Pizza Pilgrim said is that 2011 for food was a bit like 1962 for music in that 1962 for music you kind of had the end of well not the end of the world but you had kind of you're coming out of world war ii vietnam's going on this this whole culture these tectonic plates have just gone like that and this explosion of kind of beatles stones uh beach boys and then that kind of set the set the changed things and i suppose with food um in that year you had it's something crazy like this is not michelin food by the way this is more um uh kind of the the the floor being raised i there was no longer just shitty zizi do you know what i mean you had honest burger you had patty and bun you had um bone daddy's you had uh black lock is not in and around that period but it was was this this change and now food is just ubiquitous like you this restaurant in london opening all the time yeah what do you think what do you think the role of of status and storytelling like how's how's how we got to this place in food where it people are so maniacally obsessed with it like people have podcasts about it i'm a status game i mean you know like in the status game i tell the story of of marco pierre white who yeah you know like when marco pierre white came came around britain quite rightly had a reputation of having just horrible food um generally uh and you know along came harvey's and britain could lay claim to um the youngest chef in the world to have three michelin stars it's quite amazing so not only was he incredibly competent he was beautiful he was a rock star he was controversial there was there was the book white heat that was published which is which made him look like a rock star i mean anthony bourdain said for chefs around the world white heat was this kind of transition point suddenly being a chef was was was being a rock star you know and i think he said he said you know i can't explain to you how much how how much impact white heat had on the chef's world it would just he just turned into this kind of rock star thing and then how status games work in the in how they've always worked in the human world is is that is that you get this you get a high status person like marco pierre white and they get surrounded by people who think well i wouldn't mind some of that status myself so they start copying them they're not mimicking them and so Marco Pierre White trains the whole generation of you know young chefs most famously of course Gordon Ramsay and you know in the status game I quote Marco Pierre White saying Ramsay was just like he just was copying he wanted to he was so competitive he wanted to be he wanted to do what I do dress like I do he wanted to fish like I do you know he just wanted to be me and and and you know he was saying that obviously it's like he's slightly insulting way but that's but that's how it works that's how the human world works And then, of course, Gordon's come along and what have you got now?

6:38Angela Hartnett, Claire Smith, for God's sake, Jason Atherton. He's trained now a whole generation of other amazing British chefs. So that's just sort of one part of the story of like you can see food becoming a viable status game in Britain now. Food becomes fashionable, you know, it becomes a viable path to status. And the more the more status that's an offer in a particular world, the more people it's going to attract. And it becomes this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy almost. It becomes this kind of self kind of fueling fire because because the more status it offers, the more people are going to be attracted to it.

7:21The bigger the game gets, the more status is an offer, the more people is going to attract to it. And so we've been seeing this kind of runaway process with food in Britain where it's becoming more and more and more and more a game in which people could earn significant amounts of status. You know, you see, like in the 90s, you know, after Marco Pierre White, you see this new rush of TV chefs like Jamie Oliver. I know he's a bit cheesy, but people like, you know, people like him coming on board and becoming celebrities. it's like before before jamie oliver it was all tv sheffery was very um it kind of was a bit square and cul-de-sac it was like delia smith and madder jeffrey and you know the rue brothers and things like this and then suddenly it becomes much much much more younger and more youthy um so so so yeah it's really for me it's all about the status that's an offer the more status than offer the more it's going to attract the more people it's going to attract um the greater the rewards you know the greater the competence the greater the achievements and you know just builds and builds to build.

8:22Thank you so much for listening to that espresso. I hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and are ready for the day. Let's be having you, boy. And please do subscribe, follow the podcast, share this espresso on WhatsApp if you liked it. And also there's a link to our newsletter in the show description. I spend 15 hours toiling and writing this bad boy. It's full of wonderful wisdom from the biggest names in food and drink. You're not going to get these in a business book, so please subscribe and thank me later.