Why Michelin shouldn’t make China restaurant guides and the ones locals are more likely to turn to
- Michelin inspectors unlikely to appreciate the many styles of Chinese cuisine, say Chinese foodies and industry experts
- Guides like the Black Pearl book are known for adopting a more Chinese perspective. Plus: Black Pearl’s 10 top rated restaurants in China.
When Michelin entered the China market with the launch of its Shanghai restaurant guide in 2016, Zhong Ning was already way ahead of the curve, having set up a rating system a decade earlier to choose China’s best 50 restaurants.
It was a first for China, which Zhong established two years after she founded the only international edition of US magazine Food & Wine in the country, under the Trends Publication Group.
Zhong’s 50 best restaurants list, which she organised every year until 2014, brought together more than 150 professionals from the Chinese culinary world every March in a Beijing hotel for a glitzy prize presentation ceremony.
Dubbed “the Oscars of the Chinese dining industry”, the event also honoured star chefs and the best 50 Chinese bars.
Zhong would gather a team of master chefs to develop a special menu for the event, with original dishes made using gourmet ingredients such as Kaluga Queen caviar and morel fungus.
“You would see those dishes offered at China’s high-end restaurants the following year,” Zhong says. “With the exception of Michelin, other rating systems for Chinese restaurants have since been launched based on our 50-best model.”
