They stop thinking about the stars and think about the work. The chefs I interviewed accept that stress comes with the standard, absorb criticism without deflecting it, and run calm kitchens rather than fearful ones, because fear produces compliance for a year and burnout in the second.
The pressure is real and none of the chefs I interviewed pretended otherwise. A three star kitchen can lose in one inspection what took a decade to build. The question is how the people holding that standard for years manage to keep holding it without becoming ill, cynical or burned out, and the answers were more consistent than I expected.
The first move is a reversal of attention. Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin in New York, whose kitchen has held three Michelin stars longer than most three star kitchens have existed, told me he forgets about the stars and focuses on the work. On his way in each morning he thinks about what he needs to do as a chef, never about maintaining the awards. He believes that if the kitchen works hard and focuses on what it does best, the awards will follow. The chef thinking about the awards is thinking about the audit. The chef thinking about the work is the one who, over the long run, keeps the awards. It is the operating posture of almost every chef in the book who has held three stars for more than a decade.
The second move is accepting the stress as part of the job rather than as a sign something is wrong. Nicholas Yarnell, then general manager of Six Senses Douro Valley in Portugal, put this better than any chef, from the hotel side of the same pursuit.
“The trick is not to allow yourself to be overwhelmed by stress. It is not stress that makes us ill, but how we respond to stressful events.” Nicholas Yarnell, then general manager of Six Senses Douro Valley
Stress, in his account, is evidence the operator is working at the standard the work requires. What matters is the metabolism: how the stress gets processed so it does not turn into illness, fatigue or burnout.
The third move is absorbing criticism without flinching and without deflecting it. Jonnie Boer, chef and co-owner of De Librije in Zwolle, gave me the most concrete record I have of a leader doing this. In 1993, the year the restaurant received its first Michelin star, it also received a bad review, and he said the review was justified.
“It was a terrible feeling and we didn’t sleep properly for a week. But it only made us more determined. We believed in what we were doing back then.” Jonnie Boer, chef and co-owner, De Librije, Zwolle
He did not pretend the review did not hurt. He did not dismiss the reviewer. He took a week of bad sleep, absorbed the lesson and returned to the kitchen with the resolve sharpened. The chef who can be told the truth about their own work is the chef who can keep working at the standard the truth implies.
The fourth move is about the kitchen rather than the chef. Le Bernardin changed its culture around the year 2000, moving away from the authoritarian kitchen inherited from an earlier generation toward the calm one it runs today. The two things are connected. A standard at that level cannot be sustained by a brigade operating on fear. Fear gets compliance for a year and burnout in the second. The kitchen has to be calm enough that the team can sustain the work for the decade the standard demands, and the chef’s job is to make the standard non negotiable while keeping the conditions under which people meet it humane.
Underneath all four is a shared belief that perfection is a direction rather than a destination. Kevin Fehling of The Table in Hamburg told me he does not think a chef can ever achieve perfection, since every three star cook has a signature style and the profession is subjective, and yet the desire to seek it never goes away. That framing takes some of the weight off. The pressure is to keep moving, never to arrive.
Chapter 7, In Pursuit of Perfection, follows the cost of the pursuit through Ripert, Yarnell and Boer, and sets out the balance of consistency, creativity and care that keeps a kitchen from burning out the people who produce its standard.