The Michelin Guide has been rating Miami restaurants since 2022, thanks to a paid arrangement with the state of Florida and local tourism boards.
The hours leading up to the recent announcement of Florida’s 2025 Michelin Guide awardees was a nerve-wracking experience for some aspiring chefs in Coconut Grove.
Take Michael Beltran for example. The executive chef and owner of Ariete Hospitality Group earned one Michelin star three years ago for his intimate restaurant Ariete.
Days before the April 17 awards ceremony he told me, “This year there’s going to be a lot of pressure… because we’re going to try to go for two, which we haven’t done in the past.”
It was an ambitious goal. For reasons difficult to pinpoint, very few restaurants make the leap from one to two stars, and even fewer from two to three. Soon after the awards ceremony got underway, Beltran’s wishes were dashed.
“At first, I was very stressed, but then, not. Retaining the one star is itself something humbling and for which I’m grateful,” he said.
Reflecting on the past year, Beltran, a new father, added, “Just to be able to say to my daughter that we earned one star, well, she won’t get it for a while, but when she does, it’ll be cool.”
While chefs take the win or loss of a Michelin star personally, others in the hospitality industry view the matter through a more pragmatic lens.
Arianna Hernandez, director of the front office at The Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove, told me that Ariete, along with the Grove’s other Michelin star awardee, Los Felix, have “definitely put Coconut Grove on the map as a food destination.”
Greg Angelo, director of operations at The Mayfair House & Garden, calls the local awards “a universal validation,” while Rhys O’Connel, general manager at Arya Hotel & Suites, put it this way:
“People look at reviews, then they look at the star, and they’re like, ‘Well, they got a Michelin star for a reason. I don’t care about the reviews because I’m going to go back home… and tell everyone: I went to a Michelin star restaurant.’”
While it’s easy to grasp how a town’s reputation as a culinary destination can draw crowds, understanding how the Michelin Guide, a tiny division of the large French tire company, maintains a strong sway over the hospitality industry is more complicated.
Basically, it’s a story of marketing, mystery, and the perception – right or wrong – of Michelin being a trustworthy authority of fine cuisine.
Michelin’s Secret Inspectors
Unlike most restaurant rating platforms, Michelin’s star system is based on the experiences of anonymous “inspectors,” rather than customer reviews.
This approach, established almost 100 years ago, is intended to prevent inspectors from receiving preferential treatment at restaurants. Back then, inspectors located star-worthy dining destinations through word of mouth, a restaurant’s marketing efforts, and later, social media.
But today, where the inspectors go – and where they don’t – is often determined by so-called “pay-to-play” agreements that Michelin negotiates with tourist boards, cities, and states. Here in Florida, Michelin began rating restaurants in 2022, after state and local tourism boards in Miami, Tampa and Orlando agreed to this type of pay-to-play arrangement.
As a general rule, restaurants located in areas covered by these agreements – like Miami – have a chance at being evaluated by inspectors while those located elsewhere do not.
These payments have raised doubts in some minds about the objectivity – and consistency – of Michelin’s rating system.
For example, one local chef said that by expanding into new areas such as Florida Michelin in effect is grading on a curve, and that “a one-star Miami restaurant is not close to a one-star restaurant in New York or Paris.”
The chef, whose lengthy career includes numerous positions at Michelin star restaurants in New York and Europe, declined to be identified.
Others I spoke with disagreed. “The one-star category is so vast. There’s a one-star barbecue in Texas, there’s a one-star taco stand in Mexico,” Beltran said.
Gavin Humes, CEO of Scratch Restaurants which owns Sushi By Scratch on Main Highway, has a similar view. “They’ve done a good job of preserving the stars… A star is still a star, at least so far; they haven’t watered them down,” he said.
The Allure of the Michelin Star
Michelin’s first guides were published in France at the turn of the century and provided practical information such as maps, auto repair shops, gas stations and lists of hotels and restaurants in and around Paris.
Car transportation was a futuristic concept, so the guide was distributed for free with the hope of increasing car sales, and therefore tire sales, too.
The guide’s focus on restaurants and hotels grew over the years, and the restaurant rating system was launched in 1926, exclusively in France. Other European countries were added over the years. The ratings have always ranged from one to three stars:
- One Star: A very good restaurant in its category, worth a stop.
- Two Stars: Excellent cooking, worth a detour.
- Three Stars: Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.
With the onslaught of Google and Trip Advisor, the Michelin Guide might have grown obsolete. But Michelin’s succinct criteria, respected by leading chefs worldwide, combined with its app and social media platforms, has kept the Michelin Guide and its star system rolling along like a reliable set of tires (pun intended).
Almost one hundred years after its launch, the Michelin Guide brought New York City into the fold. By 2011, restaurants in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Chicago were also under inspection and earning stars.
Florida, however, was essentially ignored until 2021, when the Visit Florida tourism agency and tourism boards in Miami, Tampa and Orlando agreed to pay Michelin up to $1.5 million over three years to send its inspectors into the state. The next year, 11 Miami restaurants received Michelin stars. This year, the third year of the agreement, Michelin awarded stars to 15 Miami restaurants.
Josh Hackler, whose Coconut Grove restaurant, Los Felix, continues to hold the Michelin star it was awarded in 2022, believes that it is unlikely that Los Felix would have been evaluated by Michelin had it not been for its agreement with Florida.
He and other local restaurant insiders I spoke with agreed that the financial arrangement is a logical way to bring well-deserved accolades to hardworking chefs battling within a tough industry. For Grove restaurants, that battle includes high costs, tight margins, and a severe drop in business during the hot summer months.
The reality of that third challenge hit Hackler hard in the late spring of 2022, as the Grove’s busy season came to an abrupt halt. “There was a noticeable slow-down in business,” he recalled, “We were starting to panic a little bit.”
But that ominous feeling did not last long. Unknown to Hackler, in a matter of days his restaurant, barely a year old, would be among the first Florida restaurants awarded a Michelin star.
“All of a sudden Michelin announced, and our reservations were full to our 30-day mark. It was like a light switch,” he said.
What Matters to Michelin
While mystery shrouds the identity of Michelin inspectors, the criteria they use when evaluating restaurants is clear: 1) the quality of the ingredients; 2) the harmony of flavors; 3) the mastery of techniques; 4) the personality of the chef as expressed through their cuisine; and 5) consistency both across the entire menu and over time.
Factors such as decor and ambience are insignificant, according to Michelin’s website which states, “A Michelin Star is awarded for the food on the plate – nothing else.”
Local chefs I spoke with expressed strong skepticism about that last claim.
“That’s not humanly possible,” said Ariete’s Beltran, adding, “The food comes first, but the whole experience counts.”
Cracks in the business model, or just a leaky tire?
Despite the clear benefits that flow from a financial relationship with Michelin, the transactions have received criticism from within the industry and from outside observers.
Perhaps the most common complaint about Michelin’s financial agreement with Florida is that when a financial component enters the equation, money, not merit, will govern decisions regarding which restaurants will be evaluated.
Asked to comment on this apparent conflict, a Michelin spokesperson replied in an email, “To compile a list of restaurants that warrant an inspector’s visit, the inspection teams explore destinations in person, as being out in the field is key. Plus, they also use various sources including local and national media, social media and word-of-mouth recommendations.”
The issue of paid agreements and how those agreements influence exactly where inspectors go was not addressed.
Anthony Alfieri, a professor at the School of Law at the University of Miami, has a firm view on pay-to-play business arrangements. In an email exchange, he wrote, “By definition and design, pay-to-play practices are intended to distort markets.”
Alfieri predicts that, “Projected over time, Michelin’s apparent strategic growth model seems likely to cause brand dilution and, inevitably, reputational damage.”
According to an article in The New York Times, the city of Aurora, Colorado, serves as a clear example of the exclusionary nature of pay-to-play arrangements.
The article describes how the well-known restaurant Annette, whose chef has received some of the highest accolades in the restaurant business, was passed over by Michelin inspectors because of its location, which is “about 500 feet past the city limit that divides Denver and Aurora. And while the Denver tourism board paid Michelin to be included, its counterpart in Aurora did not.”
Whether or not Michelin’s paid relationships compromise the integrity of the playing field is a question that can stir a lot of debate, but meanwhile, do restaurant patrons care?
Jessie Spressart, a local resident and self-described “foodie,” said that her opinion of Michelin as a trusted resource is not shaded by its financial arrangements with states and tourist boards.
“If Nebraska enters an agreement with Michelin and a restaurant in Omaha earns a star, well, good for them,” she said.
Another Grove resident, Amanda Meltzer, put it this way:
“Everything is pay-to-play now, and with Michelin I like to think it’s a more respectable pay-to-play. I’ll admit, as soon as a restaurant gets a star, I’m out the door to try it.”
