The Michelin inspector – an interview with Derek Bulmer

Did anyone ever try to bribe you?



Well you’d think so wouldn’t you? In thirty-three years, you’d think that someone would have come up with a brown envelope and said, ‘Can you get me a star, Derek?’ but it never happened once. The most I ever got was when people said to me, once I’d paid the bill – you never introduce yourself as an inspector before you’ve paid – they would say, ‘Why don’t you come back with your wife?’. That’s the nearest I ever got to being bribed – come back for a free meal. I never went back for a free meal but there was never a brown envelope with money in, no.

Would you say there is a Michelin style of food?

In my day, certainly in the earlier days, restaurants tended to be more similar in style. I’ve notice in my latter years, and certainly in the five years since I left, everything’s changing; all the barriers are coming down and fine dining can be casual now and stars can be given to casual fine dining restaurants which is great. I did it with the pubs; I introduced stars into pubs and said, look these are the best pubs. The food is good, they may not have the same surroundings, but the food is good. It’s brilliant to see that carrying on. I was so happy just after I retired to see Tom Kerridge get a second star in a pub. Brilliant! It just shows you that things are moving in the right direction.

How do you explain the difference between the number of stars in the UK and the number of stars in France?

I was often asked this as the editor of the guide, so I did a study. I’m going back a decade now. And when I analysed it, it was purely the proportion of what existed in terms of numbers of restaurants. They had ten times more stars because they had ten times more restaurants. It was as straightforward as that. I guess we’re catching up a bit, in terms of numbers and in terms of percentages now that the pubs have been thrown into the equation. There was such a lack of restaurants when I started. Back in the seventies, you would go to serious towns and they wouldn’t have anything of note whereas in France, if you drove round it, every village had a little bistro in it. They just had so many more.

Was there a natural progression into consultancy?

Yes. I haven’t found it very different really. Consultancy is reviewing plus feedback and the only thing I didn’t do so much of was the feedback at Michelin. Most of the work is exactly the same; I go and review the restaurants, I write a similar report. The difference is now I sit down with the chefs and let them read it and talk to them about it and make suggestions on how they can improve. And that’s the new bit I didn’t have before. And I actually feel that that is quite liberating.

Do you have any favourite foodie destinations in the UK and abroad?

I live in East Sussex down on the south coast of England, it’s not a gastronomic part of the country, I’ll be honest with you, but I’ve got a little favourite restaurant, Wingrove House at Alfriston which is down the road from where I live and is very nice. If I was to come to London, I’m a fan of the Wolesey, J. Sheekey’s, the Ivy, anything that Jason Atherton opens, those types of restaurants where I’m happy with the balance between the quality of the food and the ambience. They would be my favourites. A destination outside London, I would have to say New York, for the same reason that London is such a great gastronomic capital, the diversity. People always say but Paris or Tokyo have so many more stars. Maybe they have but they’re all French, they’re all Japanese, they haven’t got the diversity that we’ve got here. And that’s the reason I like New York because it’s got that same diverse melting pot feel that London’s got. Personally I think they’re the two most interesting cities to eat in today.