If the winners are not yet known, the veil has been lifted a little on this post-Covid-19 selection which will be revealed for the first time in the region, in Cognac (south-west), from 4:30 p.m.

Last year, only one chef, Alexandre Mazzia, was promoted to three stars, the highest distinction in the gastronomic world.

"The 2022 vintage is a very good vintage which reflects the diversity of cuisines that can be found in France (...) but also will make room for a new generation of chefs who have taken the risk of starting out, despite the context, in their own project" told AFP Gwendal Poullennec, director of the red guide.

"It is this vitality that will be celebrated".

"Despite the crisis, despite the difficulties, the profession has shown great resilience, very great resistance. It was an opportunity for professionals to reinvent themselves, to go further and that's what we want to support," he continued.

Another trend that could well end up in the charts: chefs and restaurants whose menus are more minimalist and give pride of place to the local.

"Chefs are increasingly affected by the local and the issue of product traceability. All of this is reflected in the simplification of the culinary offer and menus".

"Reunion"

Thought of as "a moment of reunion for the entire profession", this 2022 edition is also an opportunity for the prestigious gastronomic guide to renew itself after a lackluster year in which it had been criticized for having maintained, as if Nothing was wrong, his selection despite the Covid-19 and the closure of restaurants.

Already in 2019 and 2020, the guide had suffered numerous criticisms after the demotion of two institutions, creating a stir within the profession: that of chef Marc Veyrat and that of the Bocuse restaurant near Lyon.

Will there be any further downgrades this year?

"Our concern is to be fair vis-à-vis the profession and to be at the rendezvous of quality for the clientele", specified Mr. Poullennec.

"The criteria remain the same and the method too. We have adapted our schedule (the selection was initially scheduled for January, editor's note) but we have remained in full compliance with our values ​​and our method", he added.

Quality of the table and the products, mastery of techniques, harmony of tastes, personality of the chef expressed on the plate and regularity over time and throughout a menu: the evaluation criteria "are the same everywhere in the world and always have been," he insisted.

A selection which was made with the same seriousness as in previous editions, the inspectors having been able to carry out as many meals as in previous years, assured Gwendal Poullennec, recalling that "stars are won every year".

Last year, no three-star chef was downgraded.

Only restaurants that had closed or changed concept had been downgraded.

Created in 1900 by the brothers André and Edouard Michelin for motorists, the Michelin guide is now present in Europe, Asia, North and South America and comes in around thirty editions.

At the beginning of March, he announced that he was suspending his activities in Russia due to the war in Ukraine, a year after having dedicated a gastronomy inspired by the cuisines of the former Soviet empire.

© 2022 AFP