I’ve spent much of my adult life plotting vacations around what to eat. I fancied myself a sort of less-tattooed, less-concussed Anthony Bourdain: wandering the planet in search of communion, revelation, and lunch.
I’ve pricked my fingers on sea urchins in Sicilian markets, tiny grenades glinting in the baskets of sun-dried fishermen. I’ve scaled Uzbek hills in search of beef, pre-marinated from within on a diet of mint-scented grasses. I have, not once but twice, cried over razor clams.
So, naturally, the Michelin Guide became my compass. While ordinary guidebooks sent readers dutifully towards beaches and monuments, Michelin answered the question that really mattered to me: where was the best butter hiding, and who was whipping it properly?
For the uninitiated, the Michelin Guide is the little red restaurant book whose anonymous inspectors dine in secret and emerge with judgments capable of rearranging a restaurant’s future. Stars are awarded, chefs unravel, investors purr, and diners suddenly find themselves very interested in beetroot foam. Michelin’s power lies in its theatre of whispered rituals, imaginary expense accounts, and persistent “forklore” about inspectors dropping cutlery on the floor to test the speed and precision of service. I imagine them a group of sexy foodie spies with frequent flyer miles.
The Guide is less mythologised, and arguably more useful, when it wanders beyond the cult of ruinously expensive microherbs and those who tweeze them. Michelin also awards “Bib Gourmands” to kitchens serving very good food at reasonable prices: proof that joy, on occasion, may be non-punitive.
Now, finally, Michelin is coming for Australia. The inaugural Michelin Guide South Australia 2027 selection will be revealed in Adelaide on October 14, 2026, making it the first Australian destination to be featured. Not NSW, with its Sydney harbourside swagger. Not Victoria, where everyone has a favourite chef, a preferred Melbourne laneway and a not-so-secret attachment to a dining room in Daylesford.
South Australia. The state of Barossa shiraz, Clare Valley riesling, McLaren Vale grenache and olive oil, Adelaide Hills cheese and cherries, Coffin Bay oysters, Spencer Gulf prawns, Port Lincoln tuna, King George whiting, Kangaroo Island honey, Riverland citrus, saltbush lamb, mettwurst, quandong, muntries, samphire and wattleseed. A state built on vines, wheat, salt and migration.
But let’s not pretend Madame Michelin Inspector woke one morning, bit into a perfect peach at the Adelaide Central Market and staggered towards the airport in a state of trembling conversion. The guide goes where it has infrastructure, market logic and, increasingly, partners. Michelin’s Australian debut will arrive through South Australia’s tourism machinery, not by immaculate culinary conception.
Tourism boards and public agencies have repeatedly underwritten the Michelin Guide’s expansion. Thailand committed 143.5 million baht under a five-year deal to launch the Bangkok guide. In the US, Axios reported that Southern tourism agencies collectively agreed to pay $US1.65 million a year under a three-year contract. Michelin’s line is that funding supports its existence, not the awarding of stars. The issue? A place can be full of genius, smoke, spice, aunties, ferments and charcoal, but if nobody pays for inspectors to come, Michelin’s silence can look like judgment.
For decades, enormous parts of the world have sat outside its field of vision. India has no domestic Michelin Guide. Africa remains largely outside Michelin’s map. The Guide will canonise its umpteenth Parisian bistro before it awards a single kitchen in a nation of 1.4 billion people, or a continent of 54 countries.
This all starts to make more, but also less, sense when you go back to the Guide’s origin story. Michelin is a French tyre company. The Guide was created in 1900 by the Michelin brothers to put motorists on the road and fresh rubber on the invoice. The stars read like driving directions. One star: “worth a stop”. Two stars: “worth a detour”. Three stars: “worth a special journey”. Appetite began as a sales funnel. And a corporation famous for rubber became the final word on langoustine. The fact that it succeeded is ridiculous and impressive, like discovering your dentist also judges the Booker Prize.
For a French legacy brand built on secrecy, scarcity and sacred panic, Michelin has a hilarious instinct for self-sabotage. In November 2024, Sysco rolled in. The world’s largest food distributor – supplier to hospitals, campuses and the sort of highway motel buffet where scrambled eggs go to die – became the official wholesale food distribution partner for the Michelin Guide Texas ceremony, a role later extended across other American regions. Online, chef Eric Huang of Pecking House and other restaurant-world voices railed against reports of Michelin plaques arriving via Sysco representatives, complete with sales patter and photo opportunities. Hush, craft, scarcity, obsession – meet frozen fries by the pallet.
Before we throw the little red book into a boiling vat of artisanal duck fat, we should ask: compared with what?
The restaurant critic, once feared, is now largely treated like a fax machine with opinions – too prickly for brands, too immune to the narcotic cheerfulness of the internet, too costly for most newspapers – not this one, hallelujah, which has the independent Good Food Guide. Critic desks have been cut; expertise has been downgraded to “content”. In Australia, print journalism employment fell 54 per cent between 2006 and 2021. The alternative is Google reviews written by people furious that a restaurant would not seat 13 of them without a booking. It is TikTok queues for croissants filled with other croissants. It is influencers calling a chicken nugget “insane” because someone put caviar on it.
Michelin – and other restaurant guides – remain among the last arbiters of taste. The red book can still lead you to brilliance. Its commercial and geographical conflicts are not a betrayal of its origins. Its inspectors were there from the beginning, sitting politely at the table, ordering tap water, and pretending not to be noticed.
So where does that leave me? I will keep eating my way through the world without ever having had my own driver’s licence, driven by a tyre company. A dubious chauffeur. But often the one who knows exactly where to find dinner. Good luck, South Australia. My palate and I are coming for you.
Symonne Torpy is an Australian who calls Paris home at present.
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