HOUSTON — One of the biggest culinary bragging rights is coming to the Lone Star State.
The famed Michelin Guide will soon include a Texas edition but it took a recipe of wooing and money to make it happen.
Chef Hugo Ortega’s American Dream was crafted in the kitchen and now includes five of Houston’s top restaurants, including URBE.
“I left my country in 1984 and never looked back," Ortega said.
The James Beard “Best Chef” winner is among those praising the arrival of the esteemed Michelin Guide which will soon rate restaurants in Texas for the first time using its one, two and three-star system based on anonymous critiques.
It's something the French tire company launched more than a century ago to encourage car travel, and accordingly, the need for tires.
"It’s an important award, it’s an international award," Ortega said.
It's an award Ortega thinks might expose Houston’s culinary scene to an even greater audience.
"We are the most diversified city in the country with so many strong cuisines," Ortega said.
The main ingredient in getting the Michelin Guide here is money, with Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin all chipping in a combined $2.7 million over the next three years along with the state’s travel office.
"I mean, to be able to have the Michelin Guide launch in the state of Texas and here in Houston has been a long time coming," Micheal Heckman, with Houston First Corporation, said.
Heckman is president and CEO of Houston First Corporation, the city’s destination marketing organization.
"And particularly to be the international city that Houston is -- and the Michelin Guide is in Chicago, it’s in New York, it’s in LA -- for it not to be here it’s like conspicuously absent as to why we wouldn’t have it, so we felt very strongly about bringing it here to Houston," Heckman said.
Despite some scrutiny regarding the guide in places like Mexico City where a taco stand received a star, Heckman anticipates an enormous return on any investment in Houston via, among other things, food-savvy tourists.
"Every time you have a visitor come here, they leave their money behind in this community," Heckman said.
Right now, it’s anyone’s guess as to which restaurants will be among the first to receive Michelin stars in Texas.
It's an honor Ortega would gladly welcome but creating for every customer has always been his passion.
"In today’s life, every person that comes here, in my view, is a food critic," Ortega said.