If you don’t know already, Michelin the tire company and Michelin the fancy restaurant award-giver are the same company. That means Boston and Philadelphia just paid a tire company an undisclosed amount of money to visit each city and decide whether any of its restaurants are any good. And according to that tire company, next time you visit Philadelphia, you need to eat at Her Place Supper Club, Friday Saturday Sunday, and Provenance. Meanwhile, if you’re in Boston, you’ve already given up on finding good food the best restaurant in town is officially Three 1 One.
Having lived in Boston for several years before I moved to LA, I’m honestly still a little shocked that Michelin found a single restaurant good enough to deserve a star, but in my defense, Three 1 One opened after I left. As for why a tire company hands out prestigious dining awards, that actually makes a little more sense when you look into the history of the Michelin awards — basically, back in the early days of the automobile, Michelin needed people to drive more if it wanted to increase tire sales, so it put together its own road trip guides to sell people on the idea of driving to different cities.
Honestly, not a bad idea. Personally, I’m more of a James Beard Award kind of guy myself, but I won’t pretend that any of the meals I’ve had at Michelin-starred restaurants weren’t absolutely incredible.
Why let Michelin have all the fun?
At this point, I think it’s safe to say Michelin has the whole restaurant side of things covered. Cities (well, actually, most of the time it seems to be tourism boards) are so desperate for their dining scenes to earn Michelin’s official stamp of approval that they’re willing to pay Michelin to rate their restaurants. It isn’t cheap, either, with current estimates ranging from $500,000 on the low end to potentially more than $1 million. So I don’t think any other automotive companies are going to take restaurant ratings from Michelin any time soon.
But who’s to say automotive companies shouldn’t come up with their own seemingly unrelated awards anyway? It’s already a proven formula, which means we just have to find the right angle here. You may not think “lawyer” when you think “electric vehicle,” but personally, I say it’s past time for Tesla to start rating every city’s top divorce lawyers. Actually, why stop there when it could also rate every city’s top personal injury lawyers? Heck, they should probably just go ahead and do defense attorneys, too. What can I say? At this point, it’s just a natural fit for the brand.
That can’t be the only prestigious award from an automotive company that we’re missing, though. I bet you’ve got plenty of suggestions, so let us know down in the comments. If one of our ideas is good enough, maybe some marketing department will turn it into an actual award. And before you doubt me, remember that a Jalopnik QOTD already inspired its own Jeep commercial. Anything could happen, folks.
