The MICHELIN debate

Australia doesn't have a Michelin Guide, but should it? DANI VALENT explores the calls for and against.

- DANI VALENT

In 2012, I was alone in Paris with a dark secret. Despite writing about food for years, I had never been to a three-Michelin-star restaurant. I needed to fix that. I felt like

I needed a benchmark meal to help me calibrate my criticism: how could I know what was good if I’d never eaten at the best? So I booked in at Le Meurice, at the time a three-star restaurant helmed by chef Yannick Alléno. (It’s since slipped to two stars and is under the auspices of Alain Ducasse.) Le Meurice is palatial, over the road from the Louvre and the Tuileries Garden and matching them in presence and prettiness. Pablo Picasso hosted a wedding banquet here. Salvador Dalí was an honoured guest. And then there was me, ready for lunch.

The dining room is overwhelming, modelled on a salon at Versailles. I recall ceiling frescoes, fireplaces the size of a bedsit and an elaborate ice sculpture of tangled vines and flowers shimmering on a plinth. The tables were so plush I am sure they were laid with four cloths. Each dish in my three-course lunch was ferried to my table by a choreographed phalanx of waiters, synchronously placing dishes and plates before me, whisking away cloches, turning on their heels with a whoosh. Their poise was military but they were so warm and twinkling that they almost (almost) soothed my imposter angst. Around me, the wealthy sprawled in a litter of shopping bags, affectingly bored but sure they belonged. The food was exquisite: peas gleaming in buttery chicken reduction, a piece of dazzlingly white fish, a lemon tart that scrubbed my brain clean with citric clarity.