This op-ed by Kyle Johnson Cherek originally appeared as a social media post.
Michelin comes to Milwaukee and five other Great Lakes cities. I have thoughts. Just as national attention to Milwaukee’s culinary achievements is a boon, it has been stalwartly late in coming. Visit Milwaukee, led by Peggy Williams-Smith, has been masterful in its promotion of cuisine as an activator for tourism and the press. Brava, Williams-Smith and team.
As a former James Beard judge, I am enthusiastic and cautious about the blessings of a Michelin inclusion. When it comes to the J Beards, I know chefs who have won, those that should have, and those that, though semi-finaled repeatedly, would rather have not. A Michelin star for a restaurant is something else altogether. Though Michelin has been on an expansion tear since the early 2000s, comparable only to Rome’s expansion under Emperor Trajan, its roots first in France and then Europe exclusively give its stars a gravitas unique to all other awards. The stars place you in the same rarified air of culinary legends and giants, but more so the originators. Though few have heaved them back on their own terms, those same chefs never equivocated that they had been awarded them.
Michelin’s adornment will push Milwaukee’s culinary landscape to higher elevations, but truthfully, it has always been rising just fine, thank you. It seems like a full lifetime ago, but when Sanford opened in 1989, Sandy D’Amato walked through with Jacques Pepin when it was still just studs and blueprints. Within a month after opening, Julia Child came in through the kitchen side door. D’Amato recalled in his autobiography Good Stock, that when he was cooking at John Byron’s prior to opening Sanford, and submitted a recipe to Saveur, and the magazine’s editor called him mid lunch prep to say “what are you doing cooking food like that in Milwaukee?” he quipped, “Hang on a minute while I turn down the vittles.”
When Joe and Paul Bartolotta opened Ristorante Bartolotta in 1993, Paul had already cooked at nearly a dozen 2 and 3-Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe and received a rare 3-star review in The New York Times as chef of San Domenico in New York. The chefs who trained under Sandy and Paul alone, plus brilliant talent drawn to Milwaukee from the rest of the Midwest, filled out the scene within a decade. The walls of Sanford are covered with menus of guest chefs’ dinners, the guest chefs who are, and still remain, some of the most accomplished, awarded, respected, and recognized names in America’s culinary firmament. They came to Milwaukee to cook with the greats here. The chefs knew. The nation’s media? Meh.
Of course, two chefs do not make a grand culinary landscape for a city. But that’s my point. There was a time in the early 2000s when one could walk reasonable distances from Walker’s Point on Milwaukee’s south side to the Water Tower neighborhood on the north side, and eat at three to four restaurants whose chef was either nominated, semi-finalized, or had recently won the James Beard Award. This was amazing for a city of Milwaukee’s size. Few talked, wrote, or promoted this locally or regionally. Nationally, crickets.
Exceptional food has been making its way to plates in Milwaukee for decades. Beautiful rooms and on-point service have been here too. The recent slew of James Beard nominations, semi-finalists, and the Top Chef glow is the equivalent of turning a radio dial to a station that is broadcasting a brilliant groove. It was already happening anyway. Glad you tuned in.
The Michelin step is a great one for the city and the five others in its cadre. But let’s not forget the pressure the J Beards and now the Michelin will put on an already grueling, strained, and often financially deleterious way of merging art with service, overhead, and raw materials, edging their way to “past date.” All in pursuit of making a living and attaining a dream. For every chef friend I have congratulated for a win, I have known equal moments of those who, despite giving all, are left asking, “Why not?” Let’s also see the Michelin expansion for what it is. For years, the organization has worked to throw off its ossified Francophile cuisine-only modus operandi and remain relevant. In the words of chef Mario Carbone: “There’s a lot to unpack with Michelin. Michelin started as a subsidiary of a tire company. Now, they’re their own business. They’re in the business of selling books.”
Will the stars awarded to Milwaukee restaurants in 2027 bring travel to the region and tourists and locals alike to seats in the restaurants? Undoubtedly. This is fantastic. For me, however, the forthcoming glow is tinged with a duo of dark stars. Chicago, a city you may have heard of, just south of Milwaukee, also on the banks of Lake Michigan, got its first Michelin Guide in 2011. Fifteen years ago. At that time, Milwaukee and the other five cities in its Great Lakes cohort had exceptional restaurant experiences and cuisine at the ready. Welcome to our party. It’s been going for a while.
The second Michelin misstep is the exclusion of Madison, Wisconsin, in its new Great Lakes blessing. If Great Lakes water proximity is the bar, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis do not geographically touch the Great Lakes. Neither does Madison. It touches two lakes of the inland sort. Across the five states that are part of the Great Lakes Michelin collection, I know of no other Great Lake inland adjacent city that punches as far above its own weight from a culinary standpoint than Madison, Wisconsin. The irony, coming in at near O. Henry level, is that L’Etoile, one the finest restaurants in the state of Wisconsin, whose founding chef, Odessa Piper (James Beard Winner Best Chef Midwest 2002), and L’Etoile’s current chef Tory Miller (James Beard Award Best Chef Midwest 2012), is by way of its location, along with all the other fine dining rooms, staff and chefs in Madison, exempt from Michelin’s glow.
Ironically, L’Etoile, the French-named restaurant which began and has been the standard bearer of Madison’s culinary excellence, and by my discernment has been at a Michelin level for more than a decade, translates to “The Star.”
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