Michelin stars, 50 Best and influencers: Can awards still save restaurants in Singapore?

How many visits? Which inspectors? What cultural lenses do they bring? And, why is there a single, lonely hawker stall with a star? Michelin likes to keep an air of mystery about these details.

The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, meanwhile, runs on votes. More than 1,000 voters – a mix of chefs, restaurateurs, critics and “well-travelled gourmets” – each cast 10 votes, at least four outside their home region. Transparency has improved, but it’s still a network-driven system. Think Oscars: Prestige, influence, lobbying, visibility and zeitgeist matter.

For diners, both systems answer, “What is best?” although not necessarily, “What is relevant to me right now?” But, ranking systems do provide a framework of reference to facilitate discourse and decision-making.

Michelin-starred Singaporean fine-dining restaurant Labyrinth’s chef-owner LG Han gives this analogy: “Michelin and 50 Best awards are like having bullets for your gun, assuming the business is your gun. Without a trigger, the gun is useless. Having a gun with the bullets without a trigger does not equate success. But, would you rather have the bullets?”