‘We’re being left out’: Why there aren’t any Michelin-starred restaurants in Mass.

As a chef, Rachel Miller has big dreams. And one of them is turning her restaurant, Nightshade Noodle Bar in downtown Lynn, into a destination eatery.

In the few years that it’s been open, Nightshade has been praised by Boston’s top food critics for its unique culinary focus on French and Vietnamese-inspired seafood.

Meals such as Grilled Langoustine with scallion oil and peanut Romesco have earned the restaurant a spot on a list of “best tasting menus in Boston” by The Food Lens, a culinary website.

And last year, Miller was named a semi-finalist for the 2023 James Beard Award in the Outstanding Chef category.

Despite her award-winning career, Miller said there’s still one thing holding her back from her dream: Massachusetts lacking a Michelin Guide.

The prestigious Michelin Guide, published by the French tire company Michelin, is an annual guidebook that showcases top destination restaurants worldwide that are known for their culinary excellence.

“They decipher if your restaurant is good enough to travel to,” Miller said.

“It certainly keeps certain chefs in restaurants in the ranks,” she continued. “You’re listed – that’s as best as you can get. The James Beard Award is sort of broader and has a different objective. This is if your restaurant is actually superb. It is really important to have that. It does sort of decide your future, and it is certainly a résumé-builder for those who work there.”

For Miller, earning a spot on the Michelin Guide is so important she’s said she’s contemplated moving her restaurant several times to a city where the guide exists.

Due to the large amount of press her restaurant has gotten over the years, Miller said she sees patrons from across the country travel to Nightshade, some of whom have waited two months for a reservation.

Still, many of the customers complain that the restaurant is not on the Michelin Guide, she said.

“Had I not been in a position where I needed to stay in the area, I definitely would have put all the effort that I’ve put into Nightshade Noodle Bar in a city that had a Michelin Guide – hands down. No questions asked,” she said. “If my lease gets ripped out from under me, I’m out of here.”

How does the Michelin Guide work?

Although Michelin has been reviewing restaurants internationally since the 1920s, the French tire company’s famous culinary guide didn’t enter the United States until 2005, when it reviewed some of New York City’s finest restaurants, according to the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts.

Based on culinary expertise, anonymous inspectors choose destinations to include in the Michelin Guide.

After reviewing a handful of restaurants in a given area, the inspectors rate the eateries, giving them one, two or three stars based on the quality of its cuisines.

Today, the company said that there are over 1,500 U.S. restaurants included in the Michelin Guide, including in cities such as Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago. And the anonymous inspectors have several more restaurants beyond the ones included in the Guide.

Yet, the famed international culinary guide hasn’t touched Massachusetts or New England.

“It just seems that we’re being left out,” Stephen Clark, the president and CEO of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, said. “Massachusetts has an incredible history of culinary excellence, we’ve had James Beard award winners, we’ve had featured chefs, we were the home to Julia Child. We’ve had decades of excellence of chefs and Michelin should be rating restaurants in Massachusetts.”

Even with its global network of inspectors, Michelin “does not have any news to share about additional Guides in North America,” the company wrote in an email to MassLive.

Michelin’s anonymous inspectors are always looking for maturing destinations fit for its culinary guide, the company wrote in an email to MassLive. Once all the conditions are set to assess the quality of a city’s culinary scene, the Michelin Guide will begin its process.

But the Michelin Guide does not reveal specific details regarding how a destination is chosen nor how an anonymous inspector evaluates a destination, the company said.

For many restauranteurs in a “non-Michelin destination,” this lack of transparency can block them from international attention.

For Harrison Smith, the general manager at Uni, a Japanese restaurant in Boston, the largest benefit a restaurant can gain from a Michelin star is visibility, he said.

“It’s an international guide. International travelers look at Michelin stars when they’re traveling.”

When Michelin enters a new market, a good handful of restaurants usually receive at least one star, Smith said.

Chicago has 21 Michelin-starred restaurants, Los Angeles has 23 and Miami has 12, according to the Michelin Guide. In many cases, these famed stars can boost a restaurant’s profitability with each star, one study found.

But in Massachusetts, where many restaurants are “Michelin star-worthy,” as Smith put it, that potential increase in revenue will be missed.

“If you go to Europe, there’s Michelin-starred places in the middle of nowhere – like in a bar in France,” he said. “So it seems silly to me that they’re only monitoring certain cities in the United States. And I definitely think Boston certainly has restaurants that are Michelin quality.”

Efforts to reach out to Michelin

It’s not like Massachusetts cities haven’t entertained the idea of a Michelin Guide before.

David O’Donnell, the vice president of strategic communications for Meet Boston – the city’s tourism board – spoke to Michelin about bringing the restaurant guide to the city last year, according to Eater.com.

O’Donnell was worried about paying Michelin for a city-wide guide of Boston’s culinary scene, Eater reported at the time. The VP had described the deal as a “pay-to-play” situation.

But months later, after learning more about the other ways the Michelin uplifts restaurants – like through their Bib Gourmand award – O’Donnell said he changed his mind.

“We kind of learned a lot more after the article about the full sweep of offerings that Michelin brings to the table and also a bit more about their kind of new approach to sending their inspectors to new destinations,” he said.

Meet Boston has had “some engagement” with Michelin for the past two years, O’Donnell said. But, the two groups’ conversations resulted in nothing tangible regarding how Boston gets a Michelin Guide or how much one would cost.

“It’s just us kind of understanding where they’re going in the future,” he told MassLive.

In an email, Michelin did acknowledge that MeetBoston has inquired about whether the city’s culinary scene merits a Michelin Guide.

“This is not unusual, as destination evaluation is an ongoing process in many places around the world,” the company said. But Michelin reiterated that it did not have any news to share about additional guides in North America.

The bill that comes with a Michelin Guide

Inspectors aside, other parts of the Bay State are turned off by the hefty price that comes with launching a Michelin Guide.

Mary Kay Wydra, the president of Explore Western Mass, a tourism board based in Springfield, said in an email that her tourism board wouldn’t be able to afford the price tag that comes with a Western Massachusetts Michelin Guide.

“We believe our funding is better spent promoting our diverse, locally owned dining options to the 4 million visitors that come to our region each year,” Wydra wrote in a statement.

Sometimes local tourism boards will pay Michelin to launch a guide in their city

As the Michelin Guide continued to grow its influence, it sought out partnerships with local tourism boards to help show off new locations and gastronomic scenes. The money covers the cost incurred in establishing a Michelin Guide in a new destination, promoting the selection and highlighting a new restaurant, the company wrote in an email.

But the money a tourism board has to fork over for a Michelin Guide can be well over six figures.

In 2022, Florida paid over $1.5 million in state and city tourism budgets for a Michelin guide exclusive to Miami, Tampa and Orlando, according to an investigation by the Miami Herald.

In 2023, the Colorado Tourism Office paid Michelin $100,000 for three years to be considered in their guide, according to the New York Times.

Jeremiah Micka, the owner of Tunnel Bar and Notch 8 Grille in Northampton, said that Western Massachusetts may not have the influence to attract Michelin’s attention compared to more densely populated areas.

“I feel like it’s always in major cities where you have a bigger clientele and an appetite for that style of food,” Micka said. “I think you can get a lot more ingredients and fresher ingredients in these major cities, which might sound counterintuitive, but you’re just not going to have the distribution of certain things out in say Western Mass or in the more rural parts of America.”

On top of that, Micka said he doesn’t see the value in the Michelin star. As someone who’s been in the business for two decades, Micka said he doesn’t think the prestigious culinary guide is worth its six-figure price tag.

“The amount of money that you have to put into this – think that’s kind of ludicrous to get into the six figures to be rated,” he said. “That just seems crazy.”

Does Massachusetts even need a Michelin Guide?

But, whether Michelin decides to come to Massachusetts or not, at the end of the day for some it doesn’t matter.

“Massachusetts restaurants stand alone,” Clark said. “They don’t need the Michelin star rating to still be excellent. They deliver an incredible experience. They deliver heartwarming opportunities for guests to interact with each other and enjoy the restaurant.

“And so the Michelin star rating is nice and it’s nice to have, but we’re not being hindered by not having it. I think the quality of our culinary experience stands alone,” Clark said.

Restaurateurs such as Robert Sisca, the chef-partner at The Banks House and Bistro du Midi in Boston, said that the Michelin Guide isn’t completely necessary.

Sisca, who worked at Le Bernadin in New York City, a three-star Michelin restaurant, before coming to Boston, thought the esteemed guide would eventually hit the city.

But now the veteran chef said he is focused on a more holistic goal.

“I feel like it’s more about cooking, but I prefer more about cooking for guests and cooking for what people are looking for not versus being critiqued by a guide,” Sisca said.

Still, for others such as Miller, the Michelin Guide’s critiques and reviews are still the very thing she needs to elevate her career.

And in that case, the passion for cooking still won’t be enough, she said.

“Of course, we’re doing it because we want to, and we love it, but, we’re all in it for something,” Miller said. “It’s to make it. So as long as there’s nothing – there’s no goal to reach, why be here?”

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