Worth a Special Journey, If You Have Exact Change

The woman behind the counter at the gas station on the east side asked if I wanted salsa. I said yes, then asked whether the salsa was house-made, whether the tortilla was sourced, and whether the chef had a philosophy. She said, "It's red or green, baby." I wrote that down in a little notebook. She watched me do it and gave me extra green, which I believe is called a gesture of hospitality in the industry.

I was working. Michelin, the tire company that grades restaurants, announced today that two more Austin places earned their first stars: a French-Japanese spot and a vegan restaurant. KUT reports that brings the city to seven stars. Seven. Austin now has more Michelin stars than it has functioning left-turn arrows on Lamar. Congratulations to the cooks, who did the work. My quarrel isn't with them. It's with what the rest of town does next, which is print the word "Michelin" on things that have never been within a mile of a tasting menu.

Michelin inspectors are famously anonymous. They eat, they pay, and they leave without telling anybody who they are. I have been doing exactly that in this city since 1987, so I've decided I'm also an inspector. Nobody issued me a badge. Nobody issued them one either, as far as the guy at the gas station knows.

My assignment, set by me, was the cheapest real dinner in Austin, then and now. Not a snack or a free sample at the grocery store. A dinner: something hot, something to drink, enough that you don't wake up at 2 a.m. negotiating with a sleeve of saltines.

Inspection Criteria

Michelin's scale is public. One star means high-quality cooking, worth a stop. Two means excellent cooking, worth a detour. Three means exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.

My scale also has three levels:

1. Worth a stop. You can eat it standing next to your car.
2. Worth a detour. You'll take Airport Boulevard on purpose.
3. Worth a special journey. You'll cross the river during a weekday and fight for parking near a place that has stopped validating.

I added a fourth category I'm calling Worth a Second Mortgage. A lot of new restaurants qualify for it the day they open, and not one of them asked to.

The Then

My benchmark dinner, the one my whole system is calibrated against, comes from roughly 1993. Two bean-and-cheese tacos from a trailer that had no name, just a hand-painted sign that said TACOS with the S backwards. Add a Big Red from a cooler that also held what I'm fairly sure was the owner's lunch. The total was a little under three dollars. I paid with three ones and got a couple dimes back, plus a nod that I've never gotten from a host stand.

Service was efficient. You ordered through a window propped open with a broomstick. If you lingered, a grackle reviewed you.

The terroir was a gravel lot. The ambience was a radio playing Tejano so loud the tortilla seemed to vibrate. The wine list was the Big Red. Pairing notes: red, sweet, and loud.

It was worth a special journey. I made that journey four nights a week, so I'd call it a pilgrimage.

The Now

Tonight's inspection, at the gas station with the "red or green, baby" policy, went like this:

Two bean-and-cheese tacos ran a little over four dollars apiece. The Big Red was in a refrigerated case with a digital price tag, which tells you somebody in an office has a dashboard for it. With tax, dinner came to just under twelve dollars. I tapped a card. The screen asked if I wanted to tip 18, 20, or 25 percent on a taco I had carried to my own car.

That's four times the old price for the same tortillas, the same beans, and a soda that has not changed its formula once since I had a full head of hair.

The cook did nothing wrong. The tacos were good. The salsa had a heat that came on late. The reason it costs twelve dollars is that the land under that gas station has been flipped, refinanced, and pitched to someone in a vest as a "mixed-use opportunity" more often than a griddle gets scraped. The beans are holding up the rent. The tortilla is a load-bearing wall.

I rate it worth a stop, with an honorable mention for the extra green.

Collateral Findings

Since the inspector role went to my head, I also checked the surrounding area for what I'm calling Michelin Adjacency, the condition where a restaurant near a starred restaurant starts to believe it got the star by osmosis.

Here's what to watch for over the next six months.

The menu gets smaller and the font gets thinner. Once a menu is printed in an eight-point serif on recycled cardstock, the queso costs nineteen dollars and comes "with seasonal accompaniments," which means chips.

The word "omakase" spreads. The French-Japanese place earned its star, and I expect some sports bar off Burnet to start offering a "wing omakase" by spring. That means the cook chooses your sauce, and he is choosing ranch.

The vegan star makes people overcorrect. A vegan restaurant winning a star is a great Austin story. This town has been feeding people beans with conviction for decades. But somebody's marketing consultant will take it as permission to call a potato "a meditation on the potato" and charge eleven dollars for the meditation.

The tourism copy writes itself, badly. Somewhere a brochure already says Austin is "a culinary destination." I liked it better when the brochure said "Austin: there's a trailer behind the laundromat, go before nine."

A Word to the Actual Inspectors

You did your job, and seven stars is a real accomplishment for the kitchens that earned them. I hope the staff get raises to match the reservation waitlist. I hope the dishwashers get to eat whatever comes out of the kitchen.

But if you're ever in town on an expense account and need a palate cleanser between tasting menus, go east. Find a window with a broomstick in it. Order two bean-and-cheese, and when they ask red or green, say both. Then watch the receipt, because that number tells you more about this city than any tire company can.

Twelve dollars for the cheapest dinner I can find, and it used to be three. Somewhere in that nine-dollar gap is a landlord who has never tasted the salsa and has never once been asked whether it's worth the trip.

I give him zero stars. Not worth a stop. Take the frontage road.