“The story of Michelin and that of Clermont-Ferrand are closely tied,” said Stéphane Nicolas, curator at L’Aventure Michelin. So far 600,000 visitors have made the journey to see this temple to the brand since its inauguration in 2009. Just a few kilometres east is L’Aventure Michelin (The Michelin Adventure), an interactive gallery and museum installed in an early 20th-Century building in Clermont-Ferrand’s largest Michelin industrial site. Travellers needn’t stray far from Clermont-Ferrand’s historical centre to learn about the Michelin legacy. The 1,465m-high Puy de Dôme is just visible from Clermont-Ferrand if you stand on the steps of the city’s icon, its twin-spired Cathédrale Notre-Dame. These 80 hills and cones are the remains of volcanoes that fell silent more than 7,000 years ago. Though an industrial city, Clermont-Ferrand has a bucolic setting: the sweeping Limagne plain is puckered by the Chaîne des Puys, which was inscribed on Unesco’s World Heritage list in 2018 due to its impressive geological properties. “What was innovative in the Michelin Guides was their incorporation of automobile transport, their more detailed information on routes their rating system for hotels and restaurants.”Ĭlermont-Ferrand was the original location of the Michelin head office and remains so to this day. “Michelin anticipated the directions in which tourism was heading in the early 20th Century,” said Prof Patrick Young, a specialist in 19th- and 20th-Century French history at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. With the advent of Michelin stars in 1926, awarded to the best restaurants in the guides, durable car tyres and the pursuit of exceptional boeuf bourguignon became forever entwined. The guides’ coverage of restaurants with standout regional cuisine and well-stocked wine cellars coaxed drivers into travelling further (and, of course, they needed sturdy Michelin tyres to complete their journeys). One of the company’s cleverest manoeuvres was to highlight food worth travelling for. In Washington D.C., The Inn at Little Washington is a more traditional joint that dishes up intricate vegetable creations and grows many ingredients on site.With the launch of Michelin Guides and maps in the early 20th Century, the brothers managed to make ‘Michelin’ a by-word not only for tyres – today they are the world’s second-largest tyre manufacturer by revenue – but also for travel and haute cuisine. Alinea in Chicago offers contemporary cooking that borders on the performative with dishes that flip and other tricks that the Michelin website describes as "tableside fun". and Chicago have fewer Michelin-starred restaurants than Californian cities, but in contrast to Greater Los Angeles, both places boast one locale with three Michelin stars each. Another place where Michelin-starred restaurants are typically found in the United States is Napa Valley north of San Francisco, where plush dining rooms looks out over the countryside. The dining scene is quite similar in Greater Los Angeles, where 28 star-studded restaurants are welcoming well-heeled customers from Hollywood to Costa Mesa. Restaurants offering different Asian cuisines are most often Michelin-starred in the area, followed by those offering contemporary or so-called Californian fare, which is focused on local and seasonal ingredients as well as fresh vegetables and lean meats. San Francisco and the Bay Area come in second in the ranking, with 38 highly-awarded eateries stretching from the North Bay through Palo Alto all the way to Saratoga. 12 boast two stars and five even have three stars, also the highest number of any U.S. A total of 72 restaurants in the city currently have at least one Michelin star. Diners there have a large variety to pick from, including Michelin-starred Mexican at Casa Enrique in Long Island City, contemporary Scandinavian cooking at Brooklyn's Aska or modern, set family-style meals at Family Meal in Manhattan. Michelin-star restaurants cluster around the country's biggest metros and most can be found in New York City. Receiving a Michelin star is still the highest honor for a restaurant and more than 200 in the United States currently hold the distinction.
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