The Gault et Milau restaurant guide

Villa Gallici restaurant Aix-en-Provence - Gault et Millau 2 Toques — *La Taula Gallici restaurant, Aix-en-Provence*

With 632 Michelin-starred restaurants, France is far and away the most decorated country in the world. But is Michelin still the best indicator of haute cuisine? Anna Richards dives into the world of food: The Gault et Milau restaurant guide…

Reinventing French Cuisine

Everyone knows the little red book. I’m not talking about the Bible, but for restauranteurs, I might as well be. For those in the restaurant business, receiving a Michelin star is often seen as the Holy Grail. It’s viewed as the ultimate badge of success, and chefs spent their lives slaving away in the hope of attaining one.

At its heart, the Michelin Guide was a clever marketing plan for the company to sell more tyres. Michelin Tyres was founded in 1889 in Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne by the Michelin brothers. In 1900, looking for a way to boost their sales, they came up with an ingenious plan. Deducing that inspiring motorists to travel domestically equalled more customers in need of tyres, they brought out a motorist’s guide to France, recommending hotels, sights and, most importantly, restaurants. The Michelin Guide was born. The first Michelin star was awarded in 1926.

The Michelin Guide might no longer tell you the price of fuel (in constant flux in France), but it became, and stayed, the global benchmark for haute cuisine. Rumours fly on how to obtain three-star heights — is it true that undercover Michelin reviewers drop their fork on the floor, and the time it takes waiters to pick it up impacts the star rating? Critics say that the Michelin guide is elitist, or simply ‘too French’, and it’s true that much of the restaurants featured in France are classic, fine dining establishments. Of 632 French restaurants which hold Michelin stars, only Racines in Nice is vegetarian.

Ironically, Michelin’s main competitor was originally seen as the chauvinistic one. The ostentatious yellow and red Gault & Millau guide was first published in 1972, after beginning as a magazine, launched by a pair of journalists-cum-restaurant critics.

“People thought Gault & Millau was a bit French-centric. Bons vivants, very patriotic, the beret-wearing, baguette-waving types,” says Stéphane Brehier, current editor-in-chief of the Gault & Millau magazine. “It wasn’t at all the case. In 1976 there was a 20-page spread on Chinese cuisine. In 1978 they went to Myanmar (then Burma). Who went to Burma in those days? This is the spirit I include in the magazine now. We explore shōchū (a spirit made from sake dregs) in Japan and loimulohi [blazed salmon] in Finland.”

The Gault & Millau Guide works from a points system which scores out of 20, with any restaurant graded as 10 or higher awarded a place in the guide. Between one and five toques (chef’s hats) are then awarded for outstanding cooking, with restaurants needing to score 19/20 or higher to receive five toques. Many of the award-winning restaurants featured in France are vegetarian or fusion, and many are run by young chefs embarking on their first venture. Every year, Gault & Millau awards a Dotation Jeune Talent (Young Talent Grant) to chefs under 35 to help them to open their first restaurant.

Lyon’s Michelin connection

Lyon was a city arguably transformed by the Michelin Guide. In a chicken-egg scenario, no-one really knows whether Lyon’s restaurants were extraordinary before the arrival of Michelin, or whether the abundance of motorways around the city meant that they simply got more attention. Either way, Michelin’s attention meant that Lyon’s traditional, offal-heavy restaurants, bouchons, were preserved, and the first chef ever to be awarded six Michelin stars (three for each of her two restaurants), was Lyonnaise local Eugénie Brazier in 1933. Now, it’s one of the cities where Gault & Millau has championed young talent.

Franco-Lebanese Ayla opened in June 2023, Corinne Bec and Najem Atmeh’s first restaurant.

“We met at another Lyonnais restaurant called the Grand Réfectoire,” says Bec. “We cooked lots of Franco-Lebanese cuisine at home, and realised nowhere was offering anything similar in Lyon. Najem got an email from the Institut Bocuse referencing the Gault & Millau Young Talent Grant when the idea was really just germinating, so we went for it. Gault & Millau were hesitant to take us at first because it was such early doors!”

Once they’d been accepted, though, Atmeh and Bec knew there was no turning back. It took some time to find a premise, with the pandemic fresh in everyone’s minds, banks were reluctant to lend to restaurateurs, particularly those young with no experience of running their own restaurant.

“It’s not a lump sum of money to set up a restaurant,” says Atmeh. “Gault & Millau helps in other ways. They helped us to get the best deals (and plenty of freebies) from caterers. We had about 1,000€ to spend on one, and we were given plenty of useful things, like hundreds of table napkins.”

All recipients of the Gault & Millau Young Talent Grant are inspected anonymously by a critic within the first year of their opening. Bec and Atmeh were awarded 12.5/20, enough to get them a toque in their very first year of opening, and just half a point away from receiving a second toque. Although Ayla caters to all diets, the one dish that never changes on their menu is the house favourite, a vegetarian dish of tempura vine leaves served on labneh.

“Vegetarian dishes are actually tougher to produce, and involve more creativity,” says Bec. “People often misjudge vegetables. Take chard for example, people will often say ‘I’ve got bad memories of chard, I don’t like it’, and then when they try it cooked well, they realise it’s delicious.”

Now a team of five, Bec and Atmeh began with just one other member of staff, cooking, waiting tables and serving wine to dozens of covers.

“We look back now and wonder how we did it,” says Bec.

Ayla’s success has been instantaneous, and it’s now one of the top restaurants in the city. Without the input from Gault & Millau, the project might never have got past the idea stage.\

Anna Richards is a writer & guidebook author living in Lyon. Her work has appeared in Lonely Planet, National Geographic and many more.