Photo Jérôme Brochot/Facebook
Jérôme
Brochot of Le France, a hotel restaurant in Montceau-les-Mines, a fading mining
town in Lower Burgundy, which has held one Michelin star since 2005, wrote to
Michelin in November 2017 with the request.
Speaking
to The New York Times, Brochot said
he’d had to lay off half his kitchen staff due to the costs of running a
Michelin-starred restaurant in a small town where unemployment is more than
double the national average, at around 21%. Filling 60 covers every day was
almost impossible he says and many of the high quality ingredients such as bass
and turbot went in the bin.
Brochot
has since cut his prices and adopted a simpler, more rustic cuisine that uses
less expensive ingredients and, he says, business is booming. “Since we changed
the formula, we’ve gotten a lot more people… In the heads of people, a
one-star, it’s the price,” he said. He’s also managed to cut down on food
waste.
It
was not an easy decision however, and Brochot has faced criticism, including
from the town’s mayor, who feels he has damaged "the whole region". "What I’m doing today, I’m not doing lightly, but because I have no other
choice," Brochet told Michelin.
The
last couple of years has seen a spate of chefs requesting to return their
Michelin stars, though not usually for financial reasons, most notably three
star chef Sebastian Bras, who cited the huge pressure of cooking for Michelin
inspectors, something he said was stifling his restaurant’s creativity.
By FDL