Kan Takahama

Working Undercover for the Michelin Guide
Review of the Kodansha Vertical paperback edition (November 2021) translated by Eamon Fogarty from the French language original "Le Goût d'Emma : Une femme dans les coulisses du plus grand guide gastronomique du monde" (Emma's Taste: A Woman Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Gastronomic Guide) (2018*)

This was a delightful graphic novel portraying the first year in the life of a Michelin Guide inspector touring restaurants and hotels in France show more and working up to attending her first Michelin Star rating meeting with other inspectors. Michelin does reviews in major cities around the world, but their home base and major audience is in France. As the Wikipedia article linked above mentions: "In France, when the guide is published each year, it sparks a media frenzy which has been compared to that for annual Academy Awards for films."

There are some qualifiers here in the synopsis: "Based on the true story of a former Michelin Guide inspector.", and if you read the small print on the credits page:

This is a work of fiction.

At first that may strike you as false advertising if this is supposed to be a "true story". When you think about it though, it makes sense that specific real-life restaurants and hotels wouldn't be used in the story-telling. And also that the identities of real-life Michelin inspectors would be concealed. That doesn't mean that the story isn't true in spirit and that more likely than not there were real-life parallels to the events portrayed in this graphic novel.

See cover image at https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1582873573...
Cover image of the original Japanese edition (2017*). Image sourced from Goodreads.

The Emma of the title is also likely a pseudonym, as Guide inspectors are required to remain anonymous. There is a French children's and YA writer of graphic novels named Emmanuelle Maisonneuve, but nothing in her bibliography indicates that she is also the ex-Michelin Guide inspector (although their books are merged in GR's listings). To create the book, the ex-inspector would have related events from her reviewing days to writer Julia Pavlowitch who has the lead writer credit, with manga artist Kan Takahama providing illustrations.

So I had to unpack a bit and do the research to get some background, but regardless of all that this is a wonderfully done graphic novel which is not specifically set in any exact year, although the "big hair" hair-styles of some of the younger characters suggest the 1980's-1990's. Although set in the world of gastronomy, at its heart it is the story of a young woman realizing her life goals with all the uncertainty of initial first steps into a new job where she begins to doubt herself at times but finally makes her mark by identifying and defending her tastes and passions.

Trivia and Link
* The Kodansha Vertical paperback gives the original French language edition copyright as 2018. But the Japanese language edition (presumably also a translation from the French) was actually published first, in June 23, 2017 as verified via Amazon Japan. show less

This autobiographical work tells the story of Emma becoming the first woman to be hired as a Michelin Guide Inspector. There's a bit about her initial training (reading, shadowing three experienced inspectors), her doubts, the tug-of-war between her personal life and her dream of doing this work, and her adventures across France and Japan (where she went on vacation).

A true foodie probably would have appreciated this more...or they might have found the bits about Thomas (her boyfriend, I show more think) even more annoying than I did. It got to the point where I was hoping she'd just dump him, since it was clear that he viewed her Michelin Guide Inspector work as a hobby she'd get over at some point and she had better chemistry with Marc, one of her new coworkers. Thomas kept coming up throughout the volume, but solely as missed calls and texts.

You could feel the sincere appreciation for food in the work. The illustrations were lovely and full-color - I could practically feel the weight of all the rich and heavy French foods myself. At one point, Emma went on vacation to Japan and ended up briefly losing her taste for richer French food in favor of lighter Japanese foods. I could understand why.

According to the volume, inspectors only got about half an hour of time at each location, which seemed way too short. Hopefully that didn't include food preparation time? I had other questions that weren't really answered either, like what it took for Emma to apply in the first place - she'd already applied and was waiting for a response at the beginning of the volume. How were applicants' abilities assessed?

If you're really interested in what Michelin Guide Inspectors go through, I don't know if this is the best resource, since a lot of the focus was more on Emma herself, but I still found this to be an interesting read overall.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less