Consistently excellent? I'm highly critical of my work as a chef. Even as I regularly receive excellent informal reviews from guests who come to the kitchen to say, "fantastic! thanks!", or find another way to comment on a particular thing or the overall meal, by telling the servers or sending an email - I also rate myself by guides to cuisine, like Michelin's guide. It's similar to keeping score in miniature golf; it only makes sense to score yourself accurately, even if you are ten over par. Having worked and trained under several old school(European), hard core, master chefs, I know when they would smile or frown at me.
Compliments are tentative, I remind myself, and what about those who say nothing? I discount raves somewhat because I believe they originate from those things I cooked and baked that might have earned a Michelin star - might have - if only done consistently and not as isolated highlights. Though grateful for compliments and a good reputation, and surprised invitations have actually been sought in part due to my food, I reckon less than 30% of what I create meets a one star rating but would not get that anyway due to lack of consistency. Lucky shots look skillful to others, and if I spend more time on, say, dessert, I have less time to make the rice or main course swing. Sometimes I serve a truly amazing dish that is generally ignored, while some other - to my mind mediocre - option is wildly popular. Baffling. (my definition of amazing is based first on the quality of the product, without which there is nothing, and second on factors related to preparing and finishing that interpret it truly, though truth is relative- not a very good definition, I know).
Anyway, it's highly unlikely Michelin may consider my work. Sure, I earn my salt, relentlessly act to do justice to the food I'm entrusted to prepare, have it ready and in place in a timely manner and avoid woeful errors. But a lot of my work has both built-in and random obstacles to consistency and excellence. Take soup for example (and, interestingly, Michelin considers soup unworthy of comment - which, as any grandmother in Szechuan, Nova Scotia, or Lebanon will tell you, is just plain silly.) I have to modify soups in ways I would rather not but must to avoid excluding people. I at times offer soups made with meat and labeled as such (e.g. turkey barley) as an option but vegan soup is the default. I cannot use chicken stock in potato leek soup, salt pork in fish or corn chowder (darn!), or simmer a ham bone in pea soup.
Random strange things related to family style service used at lunches include ladling of broth from the top of the soup, leaving behind half a tureen of non-liquid ingredients, accompanied by a request for, "more soup" when I am already on to getting the next course out. That occurs enough that I tend to do blended soups more often. Mostly though, it is the built-in obstacles that diminish what could be. Say I poach about ten pounds of salmon filet, as seen here, get it onto hot platters, cover with bechamel sauce, and garnish with dill. The first person to serve themselves is going to have a very different experience than the sixteenth: wether the lemon wedges get passed or not is, sadly, iffy, some will get hot potatoes and cold fish, others hot fish and cold potatoes. So even something amazing can reach someone's plate and palate too late to fully enjoy.
A perennial challenge: to minimize, get around such drawbacks. Obstacles over and above my own very real limitations accumulate; I pause to re-think what it means to be consistent. I don't know if twenty, forty or more diners will come on a given day, people come late, staff are often clueless about food, people are now growing up on fast food (no broccoli with sesame oil and garlic at McDonalds!), the global economic downturn causes cuts and my cooking is interrupted by service issues... I forgive myself more often. Slowly, with three steps forward and one back, Consistency may be achieved by adapting to conditions, editing to be in touch with the scale of my work and what people want, being like water. Hmm.
There has been one thing I do that is consistent, but does not contribute to Michelin stars. Through all the goof ups, cliff's edge chaos, or major train wrecks that threaten, or more than threaten, to undo my art and science, there is sincerity in my aim, spirit in my touch, and what I do is understood and received as a kind of love. People have told me over the years that what I did had meaning for them - a bit for some, more for others. This I value above any number of Michelin stars; this is my guide. One of the more recent examples of this was a hug - a woman appeared after dessert from among the thirty or so diners, asked if I was the one who had cooked all that, and (((hugged))) me when I said yes. A non verbal thank you for, I suppose, taking care of her daughter - who graduated mid year - and gave me this a few days earlier, this that is better than a Michelin star:
