Welsh restaurant hands back Michelin star

Most chefs dream of being awarded a Michelin star but a restaurant in Wales has decided to hand back their coveted award.

The Checkers in Montgomery, Powys, has held a star since 2011 - an honour that the owners, Stephane Borie and sisters Kathryn and Sarah Francis, say they have “absolutely treasured”.

However, ahead of the publication of the 2019 Michelin Guide on 1 October, the team have formally requested to hand back their accolade, the BBC reports.

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Explaining the decision, Sarah Francis said that she and Borie, with whom she has three children, and her sister, a mother of two, wanted to strike a healthier balance between their work and personal live.

“I don’t know how we’ve done it for all these years, juggling the kids with working split shifts and late hours,” she said.

“It has been a joy to have the star and the most amazing news when we got it. It was great for trade and brilliant for the town. But more for us, it’s about taking the business in a new direction and putting our family first.

“It means we can work in the day and have our evenings to ourselves.”

The annual Michelin guide “bestows one star for very good cooking; two stars for a restaurant that is worth a detour while three stars are given for an exceptional restaurant that is a destination unto itself”, according to The Straits Times. Yet although the award is considered the most prestigious prize in the industry, several chefs have attempted to escape their Michelin-starred status.

British chef Marco Pierre White, the youngest-ever recipient of the award in 1994, has become a vocal critic of the honour and also attempted to hand back his stars. Last week he told Channel News Asia: “I don’t need Michelin, and they don’t need me. They sell tyres, I sell food.”

However, Michelin usually ignores such requests. Guide head Michael Ellis told Vanity Fair in 2015: “You can agree with it or you cannot, but you can’t give it back. That’s not an issue.”

He added that the giving back of stars was “kind of an urban myth”.

But last year Michelin changed its tune after Sebastien Bras, head chef of the Le Suquet restaurant in France, asked to hand back all three of his Michelin stars, citing the “immense pressure” of being judged by the guide’s inspectors. Michelin, for the first time ever, accepted the request, saying: “It is difficult for us to have a restaurant in the guide which does not wish to be in it.”