🇲🇾Michelin Guide Penang Food Tour: Is Gastronomy Here Worth International Recognition? ｜檳城米其林推介乏善可陳？

The Michelin Guide tries very hard to convince us that their selection process highlights the best restaurants of the region, but one thing that we must remember is who exactly Michelin is selecting these restaurants for.
Let’s be clear on one thing: the Michelin Guide restaurants provide an experience for non-locals.
It’s not about your favourite char kuey teow hidden in a back alley run by an incredibly rude aunty with the meanest wok hei, where you have to stand around an open drain and eat the piping hot noodles off a paper plate.
These are “worth-it destinations” for the visitors and tourists, the places you would bring your overseas friends to experience Malaysia. Or if you have people to impress, whether that be clients or in-laws.
The Michelin Guide suggests places where the food is enjoyable and the ambience is pleasant, where it’s still local enough to be special and worth a try yet also very much in the range of most people’s comfort zones- local or not.
In that case, the Michelin Guide has succeeded with their selections, all of which will be satisfying- even if Malaysians may argue that it’s not the best. (Which is, of course, subjective.)
And in any case, the food inspector team has their work cut out for them trying to go through Malaysia’s vast selection of good food. Let’s see what new ‘crushes’ they will come up with for next year.
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