The prestigious Michelin Guide is now searching for Quebec’s culinary stars

The Michelin Guide is on a quest to find culinary gems in Quebec. 

The prestigious restaurant guide says its anonymous inspectors are scouring the province for Michelin star-worthy eateries and will reveal their selections in 2025.

Quebec is now the third Michelin Guide destination in Canada, joining Toronto and Vancouver. 

“Our cuisine and our sort of restaurant lifestyle here, it’s very laid back, it’s very casual. We still have some sort of white tablecloth type restaurants, but not so much anymore. The better restaurants are not so white tablecloth. They are more casual and more accessible to people. So it’s interesting to see exactly how the Mission Guide would actually think about our restaurants in relation to the other ones on their list,” said Dustin Gilman, the founder of Food Guy Montreal.

Michelin says its Quebec restaurant selection will be based on its usual criteria, which awards stars based on food quality, the mastery of cooking techniques and consistency. 

The company says in a news release that it’s excited to explore the province’s rich cuisine and showcase its chefs on the international stage. 

“It’s a lot of passion that we put into the work that we do here and so just the idea of the possibility of getting some recognition is definitely exciting,” said Liam Hopkins, executive chef at the restaurant Île-de-France, in Montreal.

Restaurants need to hit five criteria’s in order to be rated in the guide: quality products, the harmony of flavours, the mastery of cooking techniques, the voice and personality of the chef as reflected in the cuisine and consistency between each visit and throughout the menu, since each restaurant is inspected several times a year.

“Every day we try and sort of make sure that we’re working at the at the top possible level and executing at a pretty consistent way, so I don’t think there’s any special preparation. I think that we’re just trying to treat every table you know, every table relatively equally and try to put out a quality product,” added Hopkins.

While Gilman acknowledges that this recognition places Quebec on par with major global cities like Tokyo, Paris, and New York, he also expresses concerns about the potential impact of such acclaim.

“I also am a little skeptical because I don’t want the Michelin Guide to influence the restaurants too much so that they lose their identity along the way. Going after a Michelin star is very, very hard work. It puts a lot of pressure on the restaurants to not only get a star, but to maintain their star over time. If someone gets one or two or three even, to lose a star is a very big penalty. So, a very big blow to them. Hopefully we’ll see what happens. It’ll breed new innovation and new excitement to the city,” said Gilman.

Michelin-starred restaurants in Canada include Sushi Masaki Saito in Toronto – the only one in the country with two stars – and Barbara in Vancouver.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 29, 2024.