Three Stars (2010) - Documentary about Restaurants and Michilin

In honor of Thanksgiving! New thing today, watched Three Stars (2010), a documentary about restaurants who receive stars from the Michelin Guide. As you can probably tell from my blog, I pay attention to food. Anyway sometimes these documentaries about restaurants are fascinating. I always loved the UK version of Kitchen Nightmares. I think the work behind food and running restaurants is fascinating.

Anyway, this documentary was probably about 3 out of 5 stars. It was a lot of subtitles and reading and watching top chefs from around the world talk about food, the Michelin stars, their restaurants, etc. It's all a little superficial. It was a little interesting to watch the dinner performance/service by some of the restaurants, or watching how the different kitchens look or run, and watching how the different chefs act talking about food or how they run their restaurants. It's an amuse-bouches of top rated restaurants, rather than an in depth documentary about the Michelin Guide stars or specific restaurants.

I actually found the Wikipedia article on the Michelin Guide very interesting as I never knew where the ratings came from. Basically it was developed as a way to sell tires, and to encourage people to drive. One star - A very good restaurant in its category. Two stars - Excellent cooking, worth a detour. Three stars - Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey. I love that this is the basis for the guide, but they don't even mention it in the documentary. Some documentary? I suppose it's for chefs or food fans who would be impressed or enjoy watching their idol chefs talk about food. There is a chef from Japan in this documentary, who has a slight "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" way about him. In fact all the chefs have a perfectionist and passionate way about them.

My favorite story might be the Italian laid back family who live and work in the same area, with their own garden, and run the kitchen in a very relaxed manner, with grandma cutting and cooking and son making pasta in the background.

This documentary is just OK. Michelin - One star - very good within a food documentary category. I think I got something out of this though, and enjoyed it.