World's longest-standing Michelin-starred restaurant loses a star
Georges Blanc, in the eastern French commune of Vonnas, was first awarded a star almost a century ago and has boasted three stars continuously since 1981, a spokeswoman for the 153-year-old establishment told CNN.
The Michelin Guide confirmed the loss of Georges Blanc's third star to CNN on Friday.
'Our evaluation criteria have been the same for 125 years. They are focused solely on the dish,' a Michelin spokeswoman said. 'It's about five key criteria: the quality of the ingredients, the cooking technique, the harmony of flavors, the personality of the chef as expressed in their menu, and the consistency and regularity between different inspector visits.'
'Michelin inspectors visit the restaurant several times a year, with different inspectors visiting each time. The process is collegial—it's not a decision made by a single inspector; it's a decision made after multiple visits with different inspectors,' she added.
Reacting to the news, 82-year-old chef Georges Blanc told French news agency AFP: 'We didn't expect it. One star will be missing, fading away, so we will manage with two stars. It's not an issue.'
CNN has reached out to Blanc for further comment.
The restaurant, founded in 1872 with the name 'La Mère Blanc,' earned its first Michelin star in 1929—only three years after the Michelin Guide started awarding stars to fine dining establishments.
It was awarded to Blanc's grandmother, Élisa, who also accepted the second star in 1931, the restaurant's spokeswoman told CNN.
Three generations of women were chefs at the family restaurant before Blanc joined his mom in the kitchen. He took the helm in 1968 at age 25 and later went on to earn the restaurant its third star, according to the website of Relais & Châteaux, the company that owns it.
Georges Blanc is open for just 1 hour and 15 minutes for dinner on Thursday and for lunch and dinner from Friday to Sunday, according to its site. Diners choose their meals in advance, and an à la carte menu competes with two six- and seven-course tasting menus.
Diners can feast on a creative take on Bresse chicken, lobster and local-style crepes—to be paired with wine from a cellar of 140,000 bottles, according to the restaurant.
The Michelin Guide, which will hold a ceremony to mark this year's France selection on March 31, has at times faced a backlash over its decision to award or take stars away from popular chefs.
In January, French chef Marc Veyrat banned Michelin inspectors from his new restaurant, Le Restaurant Marc Veyrat, five years after taking the guide to court—and losing the case— over an unfavorable review of his cheese soufflé.
However, anonymous Michelin inspectors could still turn up to assess the restaurant, as South Korean chef Eo Yun-gwon found out in 2019, when he sued the guide for awarding his restaurant a star after he asked it not to.
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Oxfam GB, which says it earned $2.5 million for 2024/25 from all its recycling, says third-party partners are expected to remove any waste before export and to sort clothing to ensure that it is a suitable standard for local markets. 'We acknowledge that it's an imperfect and complicated system and we are striving to make improvements which reduce the potential impacts of this unsold stock on people and planet,' said a spokesperson. However, despite widespread acknowledgement of the problem, it continues to grow—owing partly to an increasingly affluent East Asia. Bales arriving from China are typically bigger and cheaper, says Agbofah, due to an abundance of rejected factory samples. 'The Chinese see the bigger business opportunity,' he says. 'They want to push out the U.K. and U.S. So it's getting worse.' The elephant in the room is, of course, Chinese-founded ultra-fast fashion phenomenon Shein, which has completely reshaped the global apparel industry, making $2 billion profit in 2023. The brand has been under the spotlight for worker rights, including revelations of child labor amongst suppliers, as well as the environmental impact of its super low-cost throwaway fashion. Still, Shein has recently been attempting to repair its image. Since 2022, the now Singapore-headquartered firm has been working with Ghana-based NGO The OR Foundation, which invested $4.2 million to promote a circular economy for textiles from July 2023 to July 2024. 'We acknowledge that more can be done by the wider textile industry to address the challenges associated with the end-of-life management phase,' a Shein spokesman tells TIME. Clearly, the Ghanaian government and activist entrepreneurs like Agbofah can only do so much. The impetus is also on apparel firms to produce higher quality products that don't fade or fall apart in months, as well as for consumers to wear clothes for longer, repair rather than discard old garments, and only deposit still wearable items into those recycling bins. Nations like Ghana are tired of being the world's dumping ground, although Agbofah is not naïve enough to want the containers to just stop arriving. His dream is to help seed a truly circular economy whereby his compatriots can safely, cleanly and with dignity turn garbage into gold. 'We're not trying to stop the importation of used goods, but we're trying to make it fair and better, where everybody wins,' says Agbofah. 'That can only happen if there is a connection between local traders and the source.' Write to Charlie Campbell at Solve the daily Crossword
