Untitled

Stephen L. Harp
were replaced with small diamonds, ranging from five diamonds to one, but the
five categories remained the same. 41 By 1929, the tiny stars and periods had
returned, and the five categories were also maintained. 42
The 1930s brought even more changes, most notably distinctions among hotels
and between the appearance of the restaurant and the food. In 1931, the guide
abandoned its earlier distancing from its own rankings and noted that
in our earlier editions a single sign (*) pointed out the hotels where the cuisine was
particularly carefully prepared. Pushing that precision farther, we now distinguish:
* hôtel ayant une cuisine de très bonne qualité
[hotel having a cuisine of very good quality]
** hôtel ayant une cuisine d’excellente qualité
[hotel having a cuisine of excellent quality]
*** hôtel ayant une cuisine fine et justement renommée
[hotel having a fine and justly well-renowned cuisine] 43
The guide thus made a clear distinction between the comforts provided by a hotel
and the quality of its food. Michelin also altered its earlier five categories of restaurants
and offered a separate ranking of the quality of the restaurants’ cuisine, thus
instituting the company’s famous system of stars. The references to cuisine disappeared
from the five categories denoting a restaurant’s comfort:
Restaurants de tout premier ordre – grand luxe
[First-class restaurants – real luxury]
Restaurants de grand confort moderne [Very comfortable, modern restaurants]
Restaurants très confortables [Very comfortable restaurants]
Restaurants moyens [Average restaurants]
Restaurants simples [Simple restaurants] 44
At the same time, restaurants, like hotels, would be ranked by the quality of their
food:
* Cuisine de très bonne qualité
** Cuisine d’excellente qualité
*** Cuisine fine et justement renommée. 45
Henceforth, the specialty of the restaurant or hotel, which sometimes coincided
with the very regional specialties being inventoried by the Touring Club and
Curnonsky, that interwar prince des gastronomes, would also be listed under the
institution’s entry in the guide. 46 A sign of the extent to which the Michelin guide
204