DESIGNER

Avery Newell

PROFILE/DESCRIPTION

Are Michelin Stars Now an Economic Must, Not Just a Culinary Honor?
A new Apple TV show gives a behind-the-scenes look at the culinary guide’s power to pack a restaurant — or empty it.

 

Since leading the kitchen as chef de cuisine at Alinea in Chicago in the late 2000s, Dave Beran has had a long history with Michelin, making him an obvious fit for the new Apple TV show “Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars,” which premiered on Oct. 10. Instead of focusing on Mr. Beran’s tweezered pursuit of transcendent cuisine, however, his story line puts something much more prosaic center stage: the money.

Specifically, how much money his Santa Monica, Calif., restaurant, Pasjoli, was bleeding after losing its Michelin star in 2022. In one scene, his chief operating officer, Ann Hsing, tells him the restaurant is in the red, even though they’re charging $65 for a single entree. In another, he says losing a star cost Pasjoli 30 to 40 percent of its business.

At the end of his episode, Mr. Beran decides to pivot Pasjoli away from Michelin and toward being a neighborhood restaurant. “It was becoming a restaurant I frankly couldn’t afford to go to on a regular basis,” Mr. Beran said in an interview.