Restaurateur
Saveliy Libkin

One of the food rating systems acts in Great Britain.

Any food rating system is controversial. The most famous is the Michelin Guide, which rates restaurants for comfort and also for food via the coveted Michelin Stars. A one star Michelin restaurant is likely to be very fine indeed, while three stars (the best) is an accolade handed out only to a few dozen restaurants in the world each year. However, this system leaves the vast majority of places untouched, and Michelin is ultra sensitive to the commercial consequences of its accolades. Hence it tends to be slow to dish out stars and even slower to take them away. This suits chefs fine (which is why chefs love the Michelin, provided they get a star of course) but makes it difficult for consumers, as it is not possible to tell whether a 1 star establishment is just on the brink of a wonderful two stars or actually should have long since lost its star.

The system which was chosen by foodwriter and restaurant critic  Andy Hayler  is used by the edition Good Food Guide, one of the best restaurant guides in Great Britain to my mind. Unlike many other guides, the Good Food Guide has an inspection system (so is not just a popularity poll that can easily be influenced by unscrupulous restaurateurs) and accepts no hospitality, hidden fees or advertising. Its inspectors are completely anonymous. This means that, while it may make mistakes, they are honest ones rather than due to some hidden commercial interest. The Good Food Guide has tried scoring out of 20, and out of 5, but has settled on a simple out of 10 system. It should be said that 1/10, which sounds dreadful in a school report, is actually very good in Good Food Guide terms. It means that the restaurant is in the top 1% of restaurants in the UK. 6/10 is roughly equivalent to 1 Michelin star, 8/10 to two Michelin stars, and 9/10 or 10/10 to three Michelin stars. A system that really reflected reality in terms of the relative positioning of all restaurants would start at 991/1000 for a 1/10, a 995/1000 for a 4/10 and proceeding to 1000/1000 for a 10/10 in Good Food Guide terms. This would seem rather cumbersome and suggest a level of precision that is unreasonable, so Andy has stuck to the simple out of 10 system. He considered also rating service and ambiance, which for many people are at least as important as food, but since this is often down to personal taste (one person’s “romantic” is someone else’s “tacky”) he decided against. Instead he notes particularly attractive settings or unusually good service in the notes.

The marks which uses Andy Hayler not always coincide with other guides, including the Good Food Guide at any given point in time.

Saveliy Libkin

ФОКУС: Лучшие шеф-повара Украины?

The weekly Focus addressed with the questions and predetermined already answers.
The task was”complex”, to estimate 50 cooks appointed by the editorial staff  and to state your versions additionally.

Not only this thing that the majority just  is not able to cook  and they are not cooks in general but tit is also the pretension to  “the best in the country” multiplied by already existing silly pseudostardom will do its work:

• The salary will arise or it should lift up
• The star is supposed to shine (not to cook, not to manage, not to teach, not to train, not to control etc.)
• The ambitions will prevail over the reality ( I am genius, what else should I want)
• The guests will read one and then the weeklies in the restaurant and they will be forecasted, wait, expect and almost always they will be disappointed… Alas!
• The headhuntres will rush to catch the ”talent” by order of the beginner restaurateurs and that new restaurateurs will be surprized much by the quality of the ”stars”.
• ……………………….
• ………………………………………………..It will be many other things.

Where the chefs can appear from in general in the country where there are no professional schols or  institutes and hystory???
Where the excellent cooks can appear from in the country without restaurant culture in general???
Where  from and how the professional reviewers from another restaurants can estimate the cooks in my projects???

Focus just did not take into account the main thing: The history of the restaurant in Ukraine IS NOT DEPEND on the quality of a chef.
The restaurant has a hundred of ways to be decent but do not depend on a half-chef-half-cook…
And the main thing: what relation to our country have the foreign cooks -”guest workers”???
If that’s the case, then the several months the interesting indeed specialists from France, Italy, Greece etc. have worked in Ukraine…
But even they are not the best in their countries, but in our country they do the geniuses from the  gastronomy, but they did not get this rating…

In this rating I have seen the chefs from my own projects and I did not understand the contents of the rating still more.
Ivan is learning to cook, Ruslan is retrained from the metropolitan food to the delicious one, but the process of the teaching takes  yeeaars… and now …already the verdict : The best… it is ridiculous and  sad.