Restelli, 33 years of Michelin secrets

Piero Antolini, Lucio Zonno, Roberto Restelli, Fausto Arrighi and now Sergio Lovrinovich. They are or have been the most important rédacteur en chef of Michelin Italia, the guide par excellence, loved or hated with the same intensity depending on whether one gets or looses a star. I didn’t get to meet the first one, Antolini, who debuted in 1956, but I did meet all the others, including meteor Stefano Senini who I bumped into by chance, one night, dining at Lucio Pompili in the Marche. After edition 2016 was out, I had lunch at Piedrigrotta in Varese with Roberto Restelli and asked him about the Red Guide from the inside.

Can you remember the day when you first entered the Michelin?
It was the 14th July 1977, I was 25. It was the day of the Storming of the Bastille, as if my destiny was already set. Eleven years as inspector, then eleven more as director, in time to work at the first edition of the new millennium, and then move to communication. Ten more years. I left Michelin in March 2010.

Out of curiosity: what was your weight when you were hired and when you left?
It’s not as if I never had weight issues, but I’ve always felt this matter with some fatalistic detachment. I can’t be precise in terms of weight, but I remember I put on weight at first, and then lost it. By observing the inspectors, I noticed no one acquired the Bibendum physique one would expect. I believe everyone has a physiological inclination to grow fatter at first. After the initial training period, everyone would indulge in all sorts of way as if it were always Christmas day, but then everything finished within a couple of weeks. Besides, I was also learning to choose wisely in order to analyse product quality and working skills.

How do you become a Michelin inspector?
In my case, my father, who had a bar in Piazza Repubblica in Milan did everything. He replied to a job ad posted in Corriere della Sera. The ad went “Multinational corporation is looking for collaborators willing to travel across the country to contribute in a touristic guide”. They didn’t say which, but there were no doubts even though they didn’t require to know French.

Have you ever hired ex chefs?
No and for a precise reason: they don’t understand the emotional consumption of a dish. They don’t have taste and therefore they cannot judge, they analyse. It’s quite different.

Once they choose you, what happens?
The training period begins. You spend a few months travelling with a more experienced inspector who takes you to starred restaurants, one, two or three, so that you can understand different standards of quality. I spent 25 years in the best hotels and restaurants. My parents always asked me if they even paid me for this, they didn’t consider it a job. I must say that the salary wasn’t in fact that high.

What was the downside of a Michelin secret agent?
Solitude. In time you managed to organise a weekend in a nice town and have a friend join you, but at first it is hard for everyone. I remember one winter I found myself in the hinterland of Cagliari, in a very normal hotel. I took a shower, sat sorrowfully and naked on the bed and started to wonder what I was doing there. I went out to get some fresh air and ended up in a church, crying, so that should anyone see me, they wouldn’t pay much attention. Paraphrasing a famous aria, at Michelin the motto could be Nessun goda perché se ti diverti, vuole dire che non stai lavorando [No one should enjoy themselves because if they do it means they’re not working].

What’s the relationship between Michelin Italia and the French headquarters?
You feel they’re always on your back. They try to influence every choice, even those of the single stars. In order to have freedom with one and then with two stars, I would increase the number of proposals a hundred times so in the end they would say ‘do as you wish’. Giving the third star without the French approval, instead, was and is simply impossible. Senini, my successor, lasted little over one edition for this very reason.

When do you take the decisions?
In September during the séance étoiles, the star session, which lasts around three days. We discuss cities in alphabetical order opening each dossier. Once, before everything was done on the computer, it was a game of colours, blue meant promotion, red failure. Once, for Palermo’s entries, we still needed a final visit to a place so one of the inspectors took a plane from Milan to Palermo there and then, had lunch and then return immediately.

There must be plenty of anecdotes.
Once I went to Cuneo and the patron was particularly annoying. There was no menu because he was to decide what you would eat ‘You must only choose the wine’. I insisted and so did he. But then he said the wrong thing, that he was not interested in what I thought because he was in the Michelin guide. I removed a pebble from my shoe as I was leaving: ‘I’m happy to inform you that you WERE in the Michelin Guide’. On a different occasion, Zonno and I were in the same restaurant where Raspelli was dining, without being recognised. He was expecting just that as he always repeats he’s more vain than greedy.

A secret?
Never have a French inspector travelling by himself in Italy, especially in the South. They can find that an airport has third-world standards or that a chef doesn’t deserve a star because he doesn’t serve butter with the bread. They were opposing everything and if during plenary meetings over there you asked why a particular French restaurant had three stars they got furious. Once I insisted obstinately to defend the ruling of one of my men and they told me that ‘inspectors are not paid to think’. It was as if we were in the Punic Wars. Anyway, decisions at Michelin are collective. There’s never a single person deciding.

There have been establishments, such as Balzi Rossi in Ventimiglia or Aimo e Nadia in Milan, that didn’t get the third star at the final visit. How is it possible to have such a disaster so close to the finish line?
There have never been tragedies. The interpretation is different. When we first gave the third star to Enoteca Pinchiorri, edition 1993, there were 10 visits and all were perfect. In the above-mentioned cases, instead, we looked for that extra oomph we hadn’t found yet and didn’t find it at the end either.

An A-, that is. So with Cannavacciuolo…
Exactly, except Antonino, who in my opinion was better than Sorriso, three stars at the time and only a few kilometres from Villa Crespi, in 2009/10 found himself, unknowingly, in a neck and neck with the Cerea brothers form Vittorio in Brusaporto (Bergamo). As we couldn’t give three stars to two Italians in the same edition…

Woe betide, I imagine the French… So you made your choice.
Yes, and on the finish line the Cerea won thanks to an extra emotion.

Like those who loose the world cup by a penalty or an Olympic gold medal by a hundredth…
As Arrigo Sacchi once said, in order to win, you need “och, pazienza e bus de cul” [eyes, patience and luck]. Sometimes the latter, above all.

What’s the biggest difference between the guide when you were there and now?
The guide has always been the pride and joy, it cost billions of lire but promoted the brand of a giant that this year, I hear, should have a turnover of around 20 billion euros. Later they decided in France to create separate production lines, such as motorbike tyres and car ones and so on. Guides and maps formed the tourism line, which had to generate profits just like other sectors. And problems began because we weren’t used to think about costs and revenues.

The biggest regret?
It’s not so much a matter of stars we didn’t give, though there’s been the case. The great distress is that I didn’t manage to have the potential of the Red Guide grow as much as I wanted, transforming it into a reliable tool, authentically representative of the Italian culinary value. We would have had no equal, given the excellent premise and the large budget. Unfortunately, making the guides independent turned out to be a short-sighted strategic view.

What was the star that you gave and gave you the biggest satisfaction?
I’m especially happy about the third star to Ezio Santin’s Cassinetta in 1990; the second to Aimo e Nadia in 1989; the third to Santini in Canneto sull'Oglio (Mantua) in 1996, with a woman in the kitchen, Nadia Santini, the first to reach such an important goal, as well as that to Alfonso Iaccarino in 1997, the most southern three stars ever, in Sant'Agata sui Due Golfi, between Naples and Salerno.

From time to time some give their stars back, what’s your opinion?
I’ve never happened to find chefs giving back their stars “intact”. In Italy, as in France, I’ve heard of returns being proclaimed, changes from a stellar restaurant offer to something more popular but only when the decline had already began, whether they knew it or were afraid of it, as with Gualtiero Marchesi whose historic and professional greatness was never questioned.