Bib is the Michelin Man’s name; short for Bibendum.
I’ve eaten at the Bib Gourmand restaurant Basta in Boulder, but before they had their Bib head. I had a pizza, because I think that’s all they had back then. It was good in that wood fired Italian style pizza way.
There were two nice restaurants in my DC neighborhood that I felt lucky to be able to frequent and then they both got Bib Gourmand recognition and I was never able to get back to either of them.
I’ve eaten at quite a lot, having lived in London for 20 years and travelled quite a bit. Including, appropriately, at Bibendum - a 2 star in London located in the old ‘Michelin’ UK head office.
Standout for me was the Fat Duck, the 3 starred place in a sleep English country village which at the time was rated the ‘best restaurant in the world’ according to one such survey. An experience I find hard to describe - more like theatre than food, and certainly more staff than diners. In a weidrly humber, tumbledown old house.
You’re reminding me of a book or a film/TV episode where a character states that a certain restaurant ‘is so popular that the only way to secure a reservation for a table is to travel to a parallel dimension where you already have one’. But I can’t remember where it comes from and it is driving me mad trying to remember haha!
I have a reservation for a bib gourmand place in Bayeux in late November. I am debating on having lunch at an actual starred location in Paris the same trip. I am a little picky about food so I am worried as lot of the menus emphasise animal parts i refuse to eat.
That kind of reminded me of Milliways from Douglas Adams’s The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, but the fandom wiki I linked to says pretty much the opposite, that reservations are easily obtained since the restaurant exists in the far future, so patrons can book their reservation after their meal once they return to their original time.
And too late to edit my last post, but if were doing Bib Gourmand restaurants (although I’m not sure if they should be included since they’re not really at the same level as places with actual stars), I’ve been to two in Sacramento: Frank Fat’s, a venerable Chinese-American place that’s been there since the late 1930s, and the now defunct Mother, a vegetarian restaurant that the chef called “vegetarian by happenstance”. He says he didn’t set out to open a vegetarian restaurant; he just wanted to showcase the Sacramento region’s agriculture and that was how the menu came out based on what we grow here. I’ve also been to Yank Sing in San Francisco, the famous dim sum place.
This was my anniversary meal at Dill in Reykjavik, Iceland this summer.
Menu:
You can click through the gallery for all the pictures:
I used this fancy new-fangled contraption called Google (why I didn’t to start with, no idea…) and the quote is from Futurama.
I’ve eaten at quite a few over my lifetime.
In general, I’d say that they used to tend towards food that looked well-plated and artistic, without much consideration of whether that food was actually tasty.
In modern times, I’d say that there’s maybe a little more focus on deliciousness but the photographability of the food still seems to be a majority component of their selection. It’s going to be a bit hit-and-miss as to whether you really get food that you’re fully satisfied with.
That’s always been my issue with changing prix fixe meals at high end places. I’m not that picky, but there are certain thing that aren’t going to work for me. If it happens to be beef liver tartare night, I’m screwed.
Once. In 1964, my wife and I were on a honeymoon trip to Europe. We were in Marseilles and there was a 2 star restaurant called Le Relais de Porquerolles. We tried to go in around 6:30 and little snip of a kid (maybe 10) looked at us in astonishment that anyone would expect a restaurant to be open so early. So we went back around 7:30 and had a superb bouillabaisse for two. We read that the 1965 guide had dropped the restaurant entirely and the head chef committed suicide. It cost about $80 which was very expensive in 1964. We did eat at a couple other Michelin rated (without stars) restaurants and they were all very good.
My wife and I had lunch at a three star one in Saulieu, France in 2001 - Le Relais Bernard Loiseau.
Our waitress was a snotty teen so it really didn’t help the experience. Contrary to what we had been told (that the French (of France) are all arrogant asses) she was the only arrogant person who we encountered over three weeks in France.
History of Michelin stars
I don’t know if it’s true today but, in the 90s, it was the Parisians who were this way.
In the rest of France, everyone was fairly normal.
Was it good? I thought Iceland was great, but the food was universally terrible (and overpriced) every place I ate there. With the exception of pastries.
It was no gas station hot dog! Dill was in my personal top 10 of all time.
The “Jolly” guys on youtube have eaten a few Heston Blumenthal meals, and they always made me drool.
I ate at the Langham when Michael Voltaggio was chef, there were two dishes on the prix fixe menu that I was a little leery about – one with fois gras and the other with beef marrow. Those were my two favorite dishes of the night.
We ate at Pasta quite a bit when it first opened (we ate the pizza before it was cool, as it were). We always loved it, but just hadn’t been back in a while. We do go pretty often to their related breakfast/lunch/cafe, Dry Storage, for pastries and an occasional sack of their house-ground heirloom flours (yes, we are that kind of bougie). We ate at Basta a few weeks ago for the first time in a while, and it is still excellent. The menu has been surprisingly stable, and we especially enjoyed the half chicken, which is close to the best chicken I’ve ever had–they bone it out completely except for the humerus (the wing drumette bone), sou vide the whole thing, and finish it in the wood oven to crisp up the skin. They also still have the campfire vanilla ice cream that’s been on the menu since day one–smoky creamy goodness. We live about half an hour’s walk or 5 minute drive from there, so we should be going back more often.
We went to Frasca in Boulder once about 17 years ago. This was long before Michelin came to Colorado. It was fine. Haven’t been back.
Couple of weeks ago we went to a 1-star adjacent place, also in Boulder. I say adjacent, because the main restaurant in Denver, Alma Fonda Fina, just got a star. The Boulder branch, Cozobi Fonda Fina, has only been open for a couple of months. It was absolutely wonderful. Not fussy. Family style a la carte dishes. Excellent food and service. Not precisely cheap, but not excessively pricey. We shared 1 cocktail, 3 apps, 1 large plate, and a dessert for about $130 including tax and tip. And we took at least 1/3 of the large plate home–enough for one of us for lunch the next day.