African Cuisine and Michelin Stars

It’s been a few years already that Michelin Stars expansion over the world continue to grow. And according to what we see, it’s not ready to stop! Which is a beautiful thing. But our questions are: Where is the recognition of black cuisine and black chefs? What about Africa? Or what about black restaurants? It may sound funny, but it’s the reality. Black excellence in that industry is still underestimated.

The Bloomberg analysis said:

• Only six restaurants in the entire planet are officially managed by black chefs.
• Mory Sacko
• Michal Caines
• Charlie Mitchell
• Georgina Viou
• Gerald Sombright
• Marcel Ravin

Can you imagine how many starred restaurants in the world are? We can’t even count, because there are so many! (more than 15000) On my hand, I would like to criticize the Michelin Star site, to not acknowledge the presence of black chefs everywhere they are. And only get interested in whatever looks like their cuisine. I wanted to say European cuisine or something very close to that. Because you must know that black cuisines (there are a lot) have:

• Techniques
• History
• Stories to tell
• Past
• Future
• Harmony
• Good quality products
• Etc…

And they are delicious, just like cuisines all over the world. So why are we not visible enough? Can someone answer that question? What I personally have to say about it is this: For a long time, African gastronomy has been seen as something unstable, strange, even misunderstood by a lot of people. Nowadays things have changed a lot and seem to keep moving forward in the right direction. We keep our fingers crossed and believe that it’s going to get better and better. And if it doesn’t, we will start to believe that it may be because of the color of our skin, racism, social class, financial problems, bad reputation, and what else?

But in our blog RESTEZ GOURMAND, we always try to end everything on a positive note. Let’s hope like PIMENT (an African restaurant in Hamburg, Germany with 1 star) and IYOKY (London), more African restaurants will get at least 1 star and more. As they say, WAIT AND SEE… ALORS RESTEZ GOURMAND POUR LA VIE‍

‍