Travel & Lifestyle

[harbinger-test-blog]

So you know all about our Michelin star-rating system, but do you know about Michelin's Bib Gourmands? A Bib Gourmand rating means the restaurant is an inspector's favorite for good value. For $40 or less, you can enjoy two courses and a glass of wine or dessert (not including tax and gratuity).

Looking for Bib Gourmands in your city?

Chicago 2011 Bib Gourmand Restaurants

NYC 2011 Bib Gourmand Restaurants

San Francisco 2011 Bib Gourmand Restaurants

[harbinger-test-blog]

Get to Know our Guides

The MICHELIN Guide 

The MICHELIN Guide, also known as the “Red Guide,” is your guide to the best restaurants and hotels. Local, anonymous, professional inspectors carefully select restaurants, using the celebrated Michelin food star-rating system. The selection features a wide variety of styles, price ranges and cuisine types, and only the best make the cut. For more than a century, Michelin’s obsessively researched guides have been indispensable to both locals and travelers seeking great places to dine and stay all over the world.

Green Guides 

The MICHELIN Green Guides, our distinctive sightseeing collective, are perfect for travelers looking for in-depth coverage of the destinations they want to explore. Our famous star-rating system helps travelers make the most of their visit and provides a wealth of information, including historical background, art and architecture, cultural insights, as well as restaurant and hotel recommendations. 

- Use the blue-tabbed PLANNING YOUR TRIP section at the front for ideas and practical information. You’ll find tours, a host of outdoor activities, a calendar of events, information on shopping, sightseeing, kids’ activities and more!

- Use the orange-tabbed INTRODUCTION section for information on your destination’s history, art, and culture.

- Use the green-tabbed DISCOVERING section to find out about the most interesting local sights, walking tours, nearby excursions, and detailed driving tours. 

Must See Guides 

Michelin Must See Guides are perfect for quick trips and weekend getaways, when time is limited and making the most of your visit is especially important. Colorful, simply organized, and ultra-portable, these guides help travelers zero in on the best their destination has to offer.

[harbinger-test-blog]

Michelin Travel & Lifestyle at BEA in New York City

The Michelin Man made a surprise visit to this year’s BEA (BookExpo America)!

[harbinger-test-blog]

Michelin Launches its First Summer Guide Ever!

Grab your surfboard and flip-flops, your sunscreen and sunglasses (don’t forget a paperback or two) and set out to make the most of summer. Included in this guide are some coastal driving tours, recommended by our travel experts, with highlights along the way to turn your trip into a summer to remember. In addition, you’ll find top picks of where to stay and dine during your journey. Whether you are on road or sand, in city or surf, it’s sure to be the summer of a lifetime.

[harbinger-test-blog]

Red Guides

Have you ever sat in a fancy restaurant and wondered who that person at the table in the corner is? That woman with the fur coat? Or that courteous gentleman with the eyeglasses? 

Who are they and what do they do? Well, they might just be an inspector, one of a clandestine clan of famously anonymous MICHELIN Guide restaurant reviewers whose notes, recommendations and ratings fill the pages of the MICHELIN Guides. Their expertise ranges from cooking to flavor to wine, and even to the manner in which a table is properly set and served. And years of training in the MICHELIN methods have taught them to behave like a regular customer while holding the restaurant up to strict MICHELIN criteria. They will do their job and leave without ever giving away their identity, but remembering every bit and bite. 

For the past century, our famously anonymous MICHELIN reviewers have lived this way. Though their methods have changed with the times, their fair and objective ratings have not, and a stringent method of awarding MICHELIN stars still determines the quality of the cuisine. Only 1900 restaurants in the world have ever been given a MICHELIN Star. Only 300 restaurants in the world have ever been given two MICHELIN Stars. And only 71 restaurants in the world have ever been given three MICHELIN Stars. In fact, if a restaurant is in the MICHELIN Guide at all, it’s recommended by our inspectors. In fact, if a restaurant is in the MICHELIN Guide at all, it’s recommended by our inspectors. In more recent times, a Bib Gourmand rating has been added if the restaurant is an inspector’s favorite for good value, which means for $40 or less, one can enjoy two courses and a glass of wine or dessert. Now you know for certain, and without question, just who that courteous gentleman at the table in the corner might or might not be.

Watch ABC Nighline's interview with a MICHELIN Guide inspector: "The Taste Makers" on ABC Nightline 12.27.10.

Want to know what it takes to be a MICHELIN Guide inspector? “The Secrets of the Michelin Guide Revealed!”

[harbinger-test-blog]

Michelin’s Scholarship for Culinary Excellence at Kendall College

Kendall College School of Culinary Arts student Uyen (Nina) Nguyen won the Michelin Scholarship for Culinary Excellence this Spring. Twelve students each prepared one of five famous dishes from legendary Chicago restaurants using their own methods and techniques. The contestants chose dishes from restaurants recognized by Michelin in The MICHELIN Guide Chicago 2011: The Purple Pig (Bib Gourmand), Blackbird (one Michelin Star), NAHA (one Michelin Star), Spiaggia (one Michelin Star) and Avenues (two Michelin Stars). The student competition, hosted by Kendall College on May 23, 2011, was evaluated by top Chicago chefs, whose restaurants are featured in The MICHELIN Guide Chicago 2011, as well as surprise celebrity chef Eric Ripert from New York City.

Nguyen received a $5,000 culinary scholarship and a stage at her choice of the chef judges’ establishments. 

[harbinger-test-blog]

European Travel Applications

Michelin travel experts have created nine new English-language travel apps for the iPhone to help travelers make the most of their time in Europe. The apps, which are available at the iTunes Store, offer travelers fresh ideas on what to do – in addition to great restaurants and hotels – in each of the following European destinations: London, Monaco, Paris, Prague, Rome, Venice and Andalusia, Spain, as well as these French regions: the French Riviera, Chateaux de la Loire and Brittany. Once the app has been downloaded to the iPhone, everything is stored on the iPhone, including the latest in augmented-reality technology. Other features include offline access to maps, options to search for points of interest in and around a location, and the ability to sort points of interest by category, including tourist attractions, restaurants and hotels.

[harbinger-test-blog]

The Story Behind Michelin

In 1889, two brothers, Andre and Edouard Michelin, embarked on a great human and industrial odyssey to develop modern transport solutions – the key to freedom and economic development – through ceaseless innovation. 

A cyclist had come to the Michelin plant to repair the Dunlop tires on his bicycle. It took three hours of labor and overnight drying to repair the tire and glue it to the rim. It was then that Edouard Michelin first dreamt about a tired for the future… a tire that would be easy to repair. 

By 1891, Michelin had filed its first patents for detachable tires that could be repaired in a quarter of an hour; and in the Paris-Brest-Paris bicycle race, ultimately won by Charles Terront on Michelin detachable tires, the public had a chance to see them.

Did you know? The Michelin brothers even scattered nails on the road to prove that, with a detachable tire, a flat tire was no longer a big deal? 

In 1898, at the Universal and Colonial Exhibition in Lyon in 1894, the entrance to the Michelin stand was decorated with two columns of tires piled high. This prompted Edouard Michelin to remark, “Give it some arms and legs and it would look like a man.” Soon after, Andre Michelin created such a character, based on a sketch by the illustrator O’Galop. 

By 1900, when Paris was preparing for the World’s Fair, brothers Edouard and Andre Michelin realized they could help vacationers riding on MICHELIN tires have a less risky, more practical journey. They created the MICHELIN Restaurant and Hotel Guide, a small, red book that has been placed in knapsacks and on dashboards ever since. And from there, they just kept expanding. The first Michelin road map was published in 1908, the detachable steel wheel (our current spare wheel) in 1913, and in 1926, they published their first regional tourist guide (our current Green Guide), about Brittany, creating the provincial restaurant star rating system. The Michelin brothers have had an impact on every mode of transportation there is, be it bikes, cars, planes, or trains, and we continue to celebrate their heritage by providing a wealth of indispensable information to travelers everywhere. 

[harbinger-test-blog]

Welcome

From a small, 400-page red guide that was distributed free to motorists and contained useful information on topics such as changing tires and maintaining vehicles, the Michelin Guide has developed throughout the years to become the benchmark in gourmet dining. Today, it comprises more than 2,000 pages and covers a selection of nearly 8,500 establishments with the goal of making travel easier.

In 1900, the first Michelin Guide was published in France.

We employ full-time professional inspectors who anonymously visit restaurants and hotels, and evaluate them on a range of criteria. Our evaluation process has been honed over time to identify consistently high-quality establishments to suit a range of budgets across a range of styles and cuisines. 

Join us on Facebook and Twitter to learn more about our guides, participate in exclusive events and promotions, and perhaps engage in an anonymous chat or two with one of our experts. We look forward to you joining us on our social journey, with all its many twists and turns.