If you’re a fan of The Bear, you know that Carmy Berzatto is obsessed with getting his new restaurant a Michelin star. You can see how intense he is, but that’s a scripted series. What’s it like when a real restaurant goes on a mission to get a Michelin star, or looks to keep the ones they already have? A new docuseries aims to find out.
Opening Shot: Host Jesse Burgess is shown experiencing some top notch dishes in various restaurants.
The Gist: In the docuseries Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars, Burgess travels to various cities and profiles top restaurants that are either seeking Michelin stars or trying to hold on to the ones they have.
Typically, he goes and has a meal in each of three restaurants that are profiled, then we see the pressure build as the annual ceremony where Michelin awards their stars for the year gets closer. The coverage of each city culminates in the star award ceremony, where the restaurants find out if they’ve earned the coveted recognition or, if they already have a star, if they’ve held onto it.
Another feature of the series is that Michelin inspectors are interviewed — anonymously, so as not to out their identities to restaurant owners — about what their process is and what they tend to observe when they go to dine at restaurants they’re evaluating.
Among the New York restaurants profiled is Coqodaq, a restaurant specializing in “Better Fried Chicken,” with executive chef Seung Kyu Kim having perfected the coating and cooking times for his chicken for over a year. The restaurant, which has Thomas Keller as an investor, serves some of its chicken dishes with interesting sauces or covered in caviar or shaved truffles. They are looking for their first star.
Also looking for their first star is Nōksu, a small speakeasy-style restaurant hidden in the Herald Square subway station. Co-owner Bobby Kwak talks about the fact that the restaurant is losing $20,000 per month, and its young executive chef Dae Kim is so hard on himself that he spirals when anyone sends back a dish.
The Musket Room already has a star, but is trying hard to hold onto it. It’s owned and run by women, including executive chef Mary Attea. However, with a casual spot open down the street and a third space being built out, Mary is running around between kitchens, hoping that her staff can keep the quality up in her absence. In addition, the seasonal menu means that almost two dozen new dishes need to be developed every few months. On a night where Attea is called to one of the other properties, two solo diners spark suspicion that one of them might be a Michelin inspector.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars is the result of taking a reverent food-centric series like Tucci In Italy and mixing in a teeny tiny bit of Kitchen Nightmares (it’s not a coincidence that Gordon Ramsay is an executive producer of Knife Edge).
Our Take: Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars illustrates that some of what we saw in The Bear isn’t bullcrap; a restaurant whose aim is to be in the upper echelon of a city’s dining scene have earning Michelin stars as part of their business plan. Yes, there’s the prestige that comes with the stars, but there is a real business reason; as Burgess mentions in the first episode, one star boosts business by 20%, two stars by 40% and three stars doubles business.
With that, comes increased stress and pressure. Depicting that makes Knife Edge an interestingly dichotomous show. When Burgess is going to each restaurant and reverently trying and praising the food, the show feels like a food-centric travelogue. But then, with just the cameras there and the weeks until the awards ceremony getting shorter, we see how the chefs and restauranteurs really react, seeking perfection with every dish that goes out in case a Michelin inspector is in the front of the house.
It certainly is a tightrope, and in a profession of high-strung perfectionists, it makes even the most dedicated chefs start to crack. When a dish gets sent back, it could have been from an inspector, and that makes the chefs worry even more, and we get to see them react in real time to someone having a complaint about a dish. It’s an interesting insight that may be edited to be played up for drama, but at least we know the reactions themselves aren’t scripted.
Burgess is a genial-enough host, though his pronunciation of “Michelin” drove us nuts. We really appreciated hearing from some of the inspectors, even if it’s done anonymously; observations of servers fawning over solo diners while they were sitting nearby are especially funny to hear.
What we would have wanted to hear a little bit of — and maybe we’ll get some of this later in the season — is how a tire company came to be the highest arbiter of fine dining. Sure, we can read the history of the Michelin Guide and how its restaurant ratings became so sacrosanct in the dining world. But it might be nice to get a historical perspective on why these chefs are giving themselves stress ulcers in pursuit of these stars.
Sex and Skin: As we say for every food show, there’s the requisite sexy shots of various dishes, but that’s about it.
Parting Shot: Dae Kim gets really upset when a fish dish comes back because the skin is hard to cut through.
Sleeper Star: We liked how honest Kwok was about how much money Nōksu is burning through, and how much something simple like a wine glass can cost.
Most Pilot-y Line: The first part of the episode, where Burgess has meals in each restaurant, can get a bit to precious about some of the dishes being served, like a mackerel dish served at Nōksu.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars shows that getting or retaining a Michelin star is not an endeavor that chefs and owners take lightly, and it gives some new insights into what the Michelin inspectors are actually looking for.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.