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The 'other' Michelin award travellers should know

Long overshadowed by the coveted Michelin stars,quina do dia 3/3/18 the Bib Gourmand celebrates the world's best budget-friendly restaurants.

When the latest Michelin Guide to California was published in June, most headlines focused on its starred restaurants, including Hollywood's seafood-focused Providence. At the awards ceremony, it joined a rarified global club of eateries with three stars, Michelin's highest honour – one reserved for lofty cuisine and prices to match. Multi-course menus at Providence start at $325 (￡240). Even their poached egg, that humble breakfast staple, comes with sea urchin and Champagne beurre blanc. (For an extra $40 (￡30), you can zhuzh it up with golden Kaluga caviar, too.)

Sublime as it may be, such fare bears little resemblance to my most memorable meals in Los Angeles. Like the spicy, aromatic toothpick lamb at Chengdu Taste, a no-frills Szechuan eatery in an Alhambra strip mall. Or the chile relleno burritos from East LA stalwart La Azteca Tortilleria, its house-made flour wrappers spilling piquant salsa across my lap.

Even if they swapped their paper napkins for starched linen and played soft piano in the background – rumoured to be among the criteria for earning a coveted Michelin star – neither eatery is likely to obtain one.

"Stars are oriented towards a certain kind of restaurant… often it's white tablecloths and tasting menus," said food writer and Eater editor Rebecca Roland, who grew up in LA and covered the most recent Michelin rollout. "The guide still considers a traditional fine dining experience very heavily."

However, both Chengdu Taste and La Azteca Tortilleria appear on Michelin's lesser-known list: the?Bib Gourmand, which recognises budget-friendly restaurants around the world. Unlike starred places, many LA "Bibs" are low-key local favourites; Roland mentioned hefty pastrami sandwiches at Langer's Delicatessen as one unmissable example. "I can't imagine someone coming to LA and not telling them to go to Langer's," she said.

Such places help explain why Bib Gourmands have become a go-to resource for many foodie travellers. But curiously, even three decades after its launch, the Bib Gourmand can still feel like an open secret.

"When you go to a Bib Gourmand, it's like you're wrapped in the people, the culture, the ingredients," said Ben Beale, a frequent traveller from Los Angeles who has sought out Bibs in cities like London and Hanoi. The Vietnamese capital has an impressive 22 Bibs, including renowned pho shop Ph? Bò Lam, which is famous for its beef heel muscle soups and where diners crouch on flimsy plastic stools.

Beale used to plan his trips around Michelin-starred restaurants, making reservations weeks in advance. But he began to feel the high-end spots lacked the strong sense of place he found at Bibs. Instead, he started using the Michelin Guide app to search out more impromptu meals. "With Bib Gourmands it's more like, 'we're going to bounce up to London, let's just open the app when we're hungry and see what's about'," he said.

The Bibs are relatively recent additions to the storied guidebook. The first Michelin Guide came out in 1900, a marketing ploy by the eponymous French tyre manufacturers hoping to inspire drivers to hit the road. In 1926, Michelin established "stars" for stand-out spots. It wasn't until 1997 that the guides introduced the modern Bib Gourmand symbol, a cartoon Michelin man licking his lips. (Bib is short for "Bibendum", the puffy mascot's official name.)

"The Bib Gourmand award highlights restaurants that our inspectors consider to be the best value for money," explained the anonymous Chief Inspector for the Michelin Guide North America by email. Meals at Bibs generally include two courses and wine or dessert for under $50 (￡37) and are more relaxed than starred meals. "There's no set formula for a Bib restaurant," the inspector added. "They are all unique."

While the modern Bib Gourmand was launched in 1997, it lacks the stars' cultural status. "Not many people know the Bib Gourmand award… they see 'Michelin' and think it's a star," said Aylin Okutan Kurt, co-owner of Karak?y Lokantas?, a Bib Gourmand restaurant in Istanbul's , waterfront Karak?y neighbourhood. Kurt sometimes has to explain the difference to tourists arriving at her restaurant.

Among locals, Karak?y Lokantas? is beloved for reverential renditions of traditional Turkish dishes, its kitchen wringing such depth of flavour from familiar recipes that it reminds diners why they attained "classic" status in the first place. At dinner, tables are crowded with small plates best accompanied by generous pours of the aniseed-scented spirit rak?. One Istanbul friend described it as "the kind of restaurant you visit if you live in Istanbul and really love living in Istanbul".

On a spring visit last year, I joined the lunchtime crowd for plates of hünkar be?endi, meat-topped smoked aubergine that's pure Turkish comfort food. At the next table over, a trio of women shared fried mant? (meat-filled dumplings) doused in silky yoghurt.

With its blue-tiled walls and well-heeled clientele, Karak?y Lokantas? is undeniably elegant, but Kurt insists it isn't Michelin star material. The cooking is homier than what she called the "chef food" at Istanbul's starred restaurants. Those, like two-starred Turk Fatih Tutak, are more likely to feature deconstructed – rather than classic – versions of the recipes her own kitchen makes each day.

Yet, traditional foods are one reason travellers seek out Bib Gourmands over Michelin stars in the first place. "When I'm going to a new country, I want to try authentic foods," said James Zhang, a traveller from Plano, Texas. "I'm not necessarily looking to try the most cutting-edge foods from chefs."

Earlier this year, Zhang visited a series of Bib Gourmand restaurants in France with his family. At La Merenda in Nice, they savoured southern French classics including pistou pasta and stuffed and fried courgette blossoms. "It just really stood out to us," Zhang said. "There were a lot of locals there, and it felt like you really got to experience something unique."

Not all Bib Gourmand restaurants serve traditional regional cuisine. In fact, some argue they reflect the kind of culinary diversity that Michelin stars tend to miss.

In a 2024 analysis, French data scientist Thomas Pernet found that French, Italian and Japanese cuisines are disproportionately represented among starred restaurants. He also noted that while Japanese food is widely celebrated, other non-Western cuisines can face bias and have historically been undervalued abroad.

More like this:

? How do restaurants actually get a Michelin star?

? The ingenious story behind Michelin stars

? A two-Michelin-star chef's guide to the best dining spots in Istanbul

In Los Angeles County, home to more Asian American and Pacific Islanders than any other US county, just two non-Japanese Asian restaurants –?Taiwanese-inspired Kato and Korean Restaurant Ki –?have Michelin stars. Ki is a new addition. In the same area, the starred list includes two French and two Italian eateries.

I thought of Pernet's research earlier this year when I covered the launch of the first Michelin Guide to Quebec. All three newly Michelin-starred restaurants in Montreal specialised in tasting menus of French cuisine. That raised eyebrows in a multicultural city that may be majority French-speaking but is certainly not French. (It was one of many online critiques, with one headline reading: "Michelin doesn't understand Montreal".)

Yet the city's Bib Gourmand list was full of restaurants that felt more representative of the city's characteristic culinary style and diversity. There was the Syrian and Armenian cuisine of Le Petit Alep, where I've lingered over muhammara dip, its rich walnuts offset by the sharp tang of pomegranate molasses. Rotisserie chicken, a local staple that melds working-class Quebecois roots and foods brought by waves of Portuguese immigrants, was represented by R?tisserie La Lune in the city's Little Italy.

Would I eat at the city's three newly Michelin-starred dining rooms, with their French-inflected menus and impossible reservations? Sure; they're probably great. But as a traveller, I'm more inclined to seek out the affordable, diverse and vividly local thrills that Bibs offer.

Perhaps I'll follow in the footsteps of fellow aficionado Beale. I'll wait until I'm hungry, look at the map and see if I can find a table at the closest Bib Gourmand.

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