The Michelin inspector – an interview with Derek Bulmer

This might depend on your mood or the season, but do you have a preference for fine dining or good pub grub?

I like them both. It depends so much on the occasion, if it’s a celebration or a casual night out. I do have a preference for a lack of formality in restaurants but fine dining has gone that way anyway. The sort of restaurants I remember thirty years ago could be a bit stiff and starchy and you could feel a little uncomfortable; they were places you had to whisper in. That seems to be dying out and fine dining has got more relaxed and I think that’s a great thing. I published a pub guide at Michelin, and of course I love pubs too.

Is there really such a thing as anonymity for Michelin inspectors?

For me personally it became more and more difficult the longer I stayed. I was anonymous for many years as a normal inspector, travelling around the British Isles, rotating areas so you were never back in the same county again. So it wasn’t a problem then but it was a problem when I became the editor because everyone wanted to do interviews and take photographs so it was much harder. Having said that, I never found that it made much difference whether I was known or I wasn’t known. When you think about it, what could they do? You’ve booked in a false name so the first moment they recognise you is when you arrive. They can’t go out and buy different ingredients they don’t already have in their kitchen. They can’t learn to cook a dish that isn’t already in their repertoire. All they can do is do the best they can and give the best service. It’s easy to pick out if you are getting special attention on the service side of things and you take that into account but they can’t suddenly turn it on with the food just because they know it’s you. So I never found that it made much difference. Sometimes, I found that it was actually detrimental to restaurants. They got all nervous and made mistakes that they wouldn’t have made for a normal customer.

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.