Going to Meet the Michelin Man

Coolly charming and impeccably styled, Jean-Luc Naret cut a dashing figure in his crisp, black suit and white shirt. He looked, as my friend Yuchin would say, expensive, but sartorial perfection is probably mandatory for the director of the Michelin guides. I, on the other hand, looked like a slob. Sneaker-shod, bearing a disconcerting resemblance to Whoopi Goldberg in a loose knit dress and leggings, I began to worry that the days spent working at home in my pajamas had warped my sense of style.

I’d been asked to interview him about the upcoming Kyoto/Osaka guide for the Japan Times. Mr. Naret has the habit of smiling at the end of his sentences, though this did little to put me at ease. Throughout our 30-minute chat, I remained nervous, much more concerned about my sweaty hands (a cruel scourge that has plagued me since childhood – I still wince at the memory of piano recitals) than the assignment I’d been given. Even so, that didn’t stop me from shamelessly angling for a job.

“How…” I began, questioning the appropriateness of the words to follow, “does one go about becoming a Michelin inspector?”

The director raised one eyebrow imperceptibly. “Well, obviously, we don’t advertise,” he said. “We’re looking for people who are passionate about food with an eye for detail. We get a lot of writers.”

“I’m a writer!” I stopped myself from saying.

“We never take people who have been working as food critics or chefs,” he continued.

“I’m not a food critic, I just write about bars!” I muffled the interjection.

Mr. Naret, who had been sitting perfectly still for 20 minutes, shifted slightly in his seat, as though afflicted by mild gastric discomfort.

“A new way of getting the right people is usually to get people as sommeliers, who’ve already been trained in other countries, who’ve already got the palate and can identify the different textures and flavors.”

I nodded, far too enthusiastically. Mr. Naret shifted again.

“What we do is take them to lunch, and at the end of the lunch, we ask them to tell us their experience in two pages,” he said.

“I could do that!” I shouted with my eyes, leaning forward in my seat like the annoying kid who knows all the answers in class.

Mr. Naret was gracious not to acknowledge my hidden agenda by laughing in my face. It was, to be fair, frankly ridiculous. But for a moment, I wondered if it might not be too late for me to change professions. We all need dreams, don’t we?