Renowned French chef Marc Veyrat bans Michelin inspectors from new €450-a-head restaurant
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Acclaimed French chef Marc Veyrat has “banned” Michelin Guide inspectors from attending his new restaurant.
The renowned cook, 74, is famed for his use of Alpine plants and herbs in his culinary creations, and has recently opened Le Restaurant Marc Veyrat in the ski resort of Megève in France’s Haute-Savoie region.
A meal at the new establishment, which boasts “high definition cuisine” will cost customers €450 per head, not including the cost of drinks.
There are spaces for just 18 customers at Le Restaurant Marc Veyrat, but Michelin inspectors will not be among their number, as Veyrat appears to still be bruised from a 2019 row with the culinary guides.
“I don’t want to be in the Michelin Guide and I am prepared to put up a sign outside saying: ‘Michelin Guide banned’,” he told Le Parisien newspaper.
In 2019, inspectors for the renowned culinary guide, which rewards the world’s best restaurants, downgraded his restaurant La Maison des Bois from the top three star rating to two stars.
The demotion came after a Michelin inspector reportedly told Veyrat that they did not like the use of cheddar cheese in his soufflé.
Veyrat was outraged by this comment, stressing in a letter to Michelin that he had only used local Reblochon, Beaufort and Tomme cheeses in his dish.
“My employees were furious,” he wrote. “We use only the eggs from our own hens, the milk is from our own cows and we have two botanists out every morning collecting herbs.”
The row became known in the restaurant industry as “Cheddargate”.
He later claimed that the mix-up could be due to an inspector’s palette, telling France Inter radio: “I put saffron in it, and the gentleman who came thought it was cheddar because it was yellow. That’s what you call knowledge of a place? It’s just crazy.”
He described the incident as “worse than a wound” and “profoundly offensive”, and said that it “gave him a depression”.
In a statement, Michelin said they could “understand the disappointment for Mr Veyrat, whose talents no one contests, even if we regret his unreasonable persistence with his accusations”.
That year, Veyrat sued Michelin, asking for the guides to reveal the specific criteria as to why his restaurant had been demoted. The French court eventually dismissed his case and asked him to pay legal costs.
It is not the first time that Veyrat has vowed to close his doors to Michelin: when he took over Parisian spot La Fontaine Gaillon in 2020, he stressed that he “never wants the Michelin inspectors in here”.
Michelin inspectors operate anonymously, meaning it would be difficult to turn them away.
Gordon Ramsay is among the big names in the restaurant world who have opened up about the impact of losing Michelin status. In 2014, Ramsay revealed that he was “very emotional” after his New York restaurant The London was stripped of its two stars. “I started crying when I lost my stars. It’s a very emotional thing for any chef,” he said. “It’s like losing a girlfriend. You want her back.”
Sometimes, however, it is the chefs themselves who renounce their recognition from Michelin. In 1999, several years after becoming the first British chef to receive three Michelin stars, Marco Pierre White handed the honour back.
“The people who gave me Michelin stars had less knowledge than me,” he told The Guardian in 2015. “You have to place a value on something that is given to you: that’s why it was so easy for me to walk away. They had no value for me.”
In 2005, two of France’s top chefs, Alain Senderens and Philippe Gaertner, gave up their stars in order to focus on simpler cuisine, while in 2017, Sébastien Bras asked for his restaurant Suquet to be removed from the guide.
“This was a beautiful challenge and a source of great satisfaction… but there’s a huge pressure as a result of our three-star status, which we’ve held since 1999,” he said, adding that he wanted to proceed with the restaurant “with a free spirit and without stress”.
