The Michelin Guide is known for identifying the crème de la crème of dining in the nation’s hottest cities. And for the first time, it’s coming to Boston.
On “Say More,” host Shirley Leung is joined by Boston Globe restaurant critic Devra First to discuss what the guide means for the city, and how the challenges facing Boston restaurants — including high rents and the steep cost of living — are impacting industry workers and diners alike.
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The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 17 episode of the “Say More” podcast.
Shirley Leung: I’m Shirley Leung. Welcome to “Say More.”
On a steamy afternoon, a few weeks back, I headed to Boston’s Chinatown to visit one of the city’s most storied Chinese restaurants.
(Recorded while eating at China Pearl): China Pearl is where a lot of people have weddings here, banquets. Every politician — if you want the Chinatown vote — you have a political fundraiser here.
It just reopened, I think a few months ago.
I’m here to meet a fellow foodie — Globe food critic Devra First.
I spent all spring eating dim sum with Devra and I miss it.
Devra First: It was really nice. It was like this little ritual and it was an excuse to get together and go out and eat like we’re working.
Leung: I knew we needed to have her on the show to discuss the latest in Boston dining, including the imminent arrival of the Michelin Guide to the city’s restaurant scene. It only felt right to start that conversation over lunch — dim sum, of course — sharing small plates of noodles, buns, and dumplings.
(Recorded while eating): We have to get the har gow, of course. Shrimp dumplings.
The rice noodle with shrimp, right? What about the seafood pan noodles? Sweet, savory, the salted egg. All right, that should be plenty.
Leung: Want some shrimp rolls?
First: Yes. Thank you. I love these. I’m just like, give me all of your textures.
Leung: Oh my God. I can have one more piece. Yummy.
First: I have not had dim sum in a long time.
Leung: Oh really?
First: I’m very happy about this.
Leung: Bellies full, we headed to a private room in the restaurant to discuss what’s new in Boston dining. How the industry, and eating out, is changing in the region.
So, Devra, welcome to “Say More.” We’re going to start with a big question here. How would you describe dining in Boston today in one sentence?
First: The one sentence parameter I cannot promise I will stick to.
I guess I would say in Boston proper, I think it’s a scene and a city full of a lot of culinary talent, which is having to sort of swim against a stream of really challenging market forces and serve a very cosmopolitan population that can have a short attention span if something doesn’t grab them the right way.
Then also there’s sort of the social media forces where I think the way things look are driving traffic a lot, and that is a challenge for people who wanna make delicious food, and focus on that. Because I think a lot of people are sort of following their eyes to their next meal.
Those are some of the things I would say that we’re looking at right now, and those things are likely true of many other American cities.
Leung: One of the big headlines this spring was the announcement that the Michelin Guide is coming to Boston, and you’ve been on the food beat for almost two decades now.
So how big of a deal is it for Boston restaurants to be in a Michelin Guide?
First: I think it’s a huge deal, and I think it’s a huge deal probably not for the reasons that most people would think of it as being a huge deal — at least in practice. In theory, it’s a huge deal because Michelin is really status-y and people who plan their travels around dining will be guided by the prospect of Michelin restaurants that they can now eat at.
So from that perspective, it’s status-y and exciting. But what makes it actually exciting, I think, is just the impetus that it provides for people who have been sort of running a restaurant for however long. Maybe you get your review and maybe you win a James Beard Award, get a nomination, but there’s only so many things that you can aim for, and to have a new goal and a new driver and a new ambition, I think it just really injects energy into the city and the people working here in a way that’s gonna make dining exciting for diners as well.
Leung: So Devra, explain how the Michelin Guide works.
It was announced that they’re coming here, but I think the inspectors, they’re already eating at the restaurants, right?
First: So, there are inspectors who are anonymous and I think that they had been eating in Boston restaurants for some time before Michelin announced that it was indeed coming here because as soon as the announcement was made, I felt like there was like a little ripple in the air, just like a little energy.
I could see it was like everybody sat up a little straighter. I feel like I started seeing people post new dishes on social media and sort of spruce up their presence a little bit. And so I think people are probably doing that with their menus, with their staff in their kitchens. I think that regardless of the results of the Michelin visits, Boston diners will just sort of overall get to experience the results or benefits or whatever of the response to Michelin’s presence here.
I think for a long time I thought Boston shouldn’t participate in Michelin because it’s sort of a pay to play thing sometimes where the tourism boards pay money to Michelin and then Michelin comes and sends people to the city. Somebody has to pay for it. I’m not faulting the system, but I didn’t necessarily think it was something worth it for Boston to participate in.
I think five or 10 years ago, Michelin inspectors might have had more to choose from when, when they went out to eat. But at that time I would’ve said like, “No, we shouldn’t do this. We don’t need to do this.” But at this point, enough places are participating in this pay-to-play system.
I think now we can look at it as a way to showcase our dining scene and to not participate in the system at a certain point becomes punitive.
Leung: So now that Michelin inspectors are running around town secretly testing all these restaurants, which restaurants do you think are destined for a star?
First: Michelin has a star system, and it’s really hard to get even one star — never mind more than that. And I think that the kinds of places that we might expect to see get stars would be something like Ostra, which is, a very high end seafood restaurant and it’s sort of place when people who want to eat a really beautiful meal and don’t care how much they’re spending, where are you going to to send them? I feel like Ostra is a very good candidate. I think another good candidate for Michelin consideration will be O Ya, which is very ahead of its time here.
It got a lot of national attention. It serves this sort of sushi omakase, like giant tasting menus. It’s very inventive in its flavor profiles and it’s got a little bit of a rock and roll attitude, but it’s also got an amazing wine and sake list. It has a reputation and I think that that might be a place that Michelin also would look at.
Leung: Beyond, having Michelin Guide here and restaurants upping their game because, they want to impress the inspectors. How else do you think dining might change in the city?
First: I just really think it’s gonna light a fire under people who have ambition.
A lot of people do wind up leaving Boston who are ambitious because there’s like a ceiling to what you can accomplish here in terms of awards or recognition.
So people might leave and go to New York or the Bay Area for people who are ambitious and who really wanna be at the pinnacle of their craft and the pinnacle of their fields, so this is a great incentive for them.
I think it could help keep talent here who might have otherwise left, and that’s really good for us. It’s new fuel for the fire. That’s exciting and that’s gonna trickle down to the diner.
Leung: What can make or break a restaurant has a lot to do with economics and policy in the city.
I wrote a series last year about the high cost of liquor licenses, how that hurt Boston’s restaurant scene. But there’s more barriers, it’s the high cost of rent here and how late restaurants can serve food and the list goes on. So is the City of Boston doing anything from a policy perspective to make it easier for restaurants to succeed in the city?
Or are there policies that make it difficult for restaurants to succeed?
First: The liquor license reform is the big one that comes to mind, and I think that the liquor license reform is an answer to your other side of the question, which is what makes it hard. That liquor license piece of the equation is such a stumbling block because liquor licenses have cost so much and that’s how a lot of places, even though people are drinking less, that’s still how places make money.
So, that’s the big one. But I still just think the city is so expensive. When I see an independent restaurant open and it lands on its feet really well, it’s a pretty sure bet to me that there’s money behind it, like independent money.
You can’t bootstrap excellence in this city anymore unless you really just catch lightning. It’s too expensive, it’s too hard, there’s too many hurdles, and I think even people who have been operating in this city for a really long time, very successfully, are losing confidence in their ability to open new places here.
You can’t really afford to live in this city on anyone’s wages, never mind someone who works in a restaurant. If you open here, well, where’s your staff gonna live?
So I think that a lot of people are moving, are looking outside of the city when they go to open new places or expand.
Leung: So, Devra, you’ve been a restaurant critic for the Globe for almost 20 years now. How has your job evolved?
First: I would say just restaurant criticism in this country has changed tremendously since I started doing it. There used to be so many more outlets who had restaurant critics. There used to be so many more outlets, period.
Things like Yelp, TikTok, all the traffic drivers, websites, all of those things like were not the forces that they are now or didn’t exist. So where people get their information from is completely different, and I think that there is value in all of the ways you get your information.
Maybe on social media you see what the place looks like and feels like, and then maybe you go on Yelp and you can sort of get the crowdsourced opinion about the place, but then I just think having a single data point, where you know where that person is coming from ethically. I’m not offering anything for a comped meal. I don’t have friendships with the people whose restaurants I’m covering. I’m pretty purely adhering to traditional journalistic ethics.
Leung: When I think about the high cost of doing business in Boston, one of the things is that you have a lot of restaurants that don’t and can’t take risks. That’s why I think we have a lot of Italian restaurants. That’s why we have a lot of steakhouses. They’re enormous because you need the volume and the high prices and you need the masses to make the numbers work.
And so there is a certain sameness to restaurants now in Boston, right?
First: Well, I think yes, in a lot of ways. Maybe there’s a lot of diversity here too, in a way that there wasn’t always in the past. But I do think that we have seen consolidation by restaurant groups in recent years more than before, because when you group things, you just have more money at your disposal and also maybe you can afford the lawyer who can help you get the permit or whatever real estate deal.
Some people, little scrappy independent operators, seem to work so hard and just be butting their heads against the wall to try to get the simplest thing open.
And then someone who has multiple restaurants in the city and a lot of power and a lot of money can just seem to get something open like that. A lot of these restaurant groups are excellent, but it is just inherently less diversity of flavors and approaches and styles when restaurant groups have the power like that.
I don’t think Boston is alone in this. I think this is happening in cities everywhere, but it’s happening.
Leung: It’s summer, it’s a fleeting time of year in New England, so I have to ask you, what’s your perfect outdoor dining crawl for a summer night? Appetizer, dinner, drinks. Paint the picture for us.
First: All right, let’s say you’re gonna wanna go to the beach, right? Because why would you not wanna go to the beach? So let’s say you go to Revere Beach, and obviously you’re gonna get a little bit hungry, so you wanna head to this — it’s almost like a shack. It’s one of those places the rollup metal window.
It’s called La Metapaneca Grill and it’s beach snacks, but like the best beach snacks that you can get. So you’re gonna wanna get a cup of ceviche and you’re gonna wanna get a mangonada, which is like this sort of slushy mango drink, but with this sour chili and crusted straw that you drink with. You can have that as a snack. You can have that as a lunch.
Maybe you wanna walk along and find some soft serve mid-afternoon. And then for dinner, no one is ever gonna be sad about going to Winthrop. I just love Belle Isle because first of all, the lobster roll is incredible. It’s just a ridiculous amount of lobster, but you’re also on the water.
So you might wanna do that. Those are just sort of like classic summery things. But if you want to eat a nice meal by the water, you could go to Woods Hill Pier 4. It’s in the Seaport.
It really is right on the water. The food is delicious and interesting. The drinks are nice. You could go there, or if you’re like, “I wish I was in Nantucket, but I’m not,” you could go to Nautilus, which is also on Pier 4. Those are two options that I think people who live in Boston would still enjoy while being in Seaport on the water.
Leung: Alright, Devra, we started this conversation, our tummy’s full with dim sum, and now I’m hungry again after hearing about your perfect summer night crawl.
Devra First is the restaurant critic and food writer at the Boston Globe. Thanks for having dim sum and thanks for being on “Say More.”
First: Thank you. Now I’m gonna go out into Chinatown and find something else to eat.
Listen to more “Say More” episodes at globe.com/saymore and wherever you get your podcasts. If you like the show, please follow us and leave us a review. You can email us at saymore@globe.com.
Kara Mihm of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Shirley Leung is a Business columnist. She can be reached at shirley.leung@globe.com.