A thunderbolt in the gastronomic world. With one week to go before the ceremony for the 2023 Michelin Guide to France, which will be held on 6 March in Strasbourg, one of the best restaurants in the world, led by Guy Savoy at La Monnaie in Paris, has been demoted from three to two stars.
“Until now, I have only known better moments in my career. Tonight I'm thinking about the teams and I'm going to talk to them tomorrow. We lost the game this year but we'll win it back next year," said the chef, who has topped the La Liste ranking for six years.
The same punishment was meted out to Christopher Coutanceau, the chef-fisherman from La Rochelle, who received his third star in 2020 as well as a special award for his commitment to sustainable fishing in 2019.
"These are exceptional restaurants, so you can imagine that these are decisions that are carefully thought out, backed up by numerous visits by our inspectors throughout the year," Gwendal Poullennec, the Guide's boss, told AFP. This is the first time since 2020 and the start of the Covid19 pandemic that a chef holding three stars, the Michelin Guide's highest distinction, has been demoted.
Michel Sarran loses second Michelin star
But Guy Savoy and Christopher Coutanceau aren’t the only ones to have received bad news from Gwendal Poullennec. Three two-star establishments will be downgraded in the Michelin Guide to France 2023. They are La Table de l'Alpaga in Megève, Jean-Luc Tartarin in Le Havre and Michel Sarran's restaurant in Toulouse, which are now listed as one-star restaurants.
After two years of calm tinged by the pandemic, the Michelin Guide has reminded us that "stars are won every year" and that even the most media-savvy chefs are not immune. We remember in particular the scandal created by the loss of Marc Veyrat's third star in 2019, then that of the Paul Bocuse restaurant in 2020, the year of the death of the Pope of Gastronomy.
