The Brits and the Grammys also take place within the first, trophy-laden quarter of the year. It’s a glitzy season with the biggest stars on the planet grabbing headlines ad nauseam. But out of the spotlight, another set of stars is being lined up, somewhat more literally.

The Great Britain and Ireland Michelin Guide awards ceremony – which took place this February in Dublin – is a distinctly un-Hollywood affair. It is made for people in the industry – chefs, sommeliers, waiters, tourist boards – which makes for often uncomfortable viewing. Chefs put on the spot do not make natural orators.

The ceremony is awkward and unpolished, with stars dished out en masse like a university graduation day. But like actors crave an Oscar, this is the accolade all chefs want: a star, or three, from the bulbous French tyre giant. The Youtube livestream (the revolution, it turns out, will not be televised) was only watched by around 2,000 people but what it lacks in size, this audience makes up for in dogged devotion to stargazing.

And they were not happy. A heated chat saw one watcher dub the ceremony and its lack of new three star restaurants a “pile of shite”. There is something bizarre about the whole affair.

From my desk, I watched people fight over whether certain restaurants merited two or three stars, while a gout-ridden mascot made of stacked tyres ambled around on the stage. This fine dining is not Patrick Bateman obsessively trying to get a table at Dorsia, rather it’s an online community forensically categorising restaurants, flipping the lens firmly onto the destination instead of the diner. On platforms like Reddit and Instagram, star chasers gather to pass notes.

Devotees of Michelin dissect their meals and experiences. The language used to describe culinary firsts is often akin to that used when speaking about sexual awakenings. Users reminisce on their ‘first three-star’ with the same reverie as a teenager losing their virginity.

A one star is like getting to first base. The Michelin Guide Ceremony for Great Britain and Ireland 2026 But obsession breeds expertise, and the reviews often offer an entirely new way of thinking and writing about restaurants. In the work of traditional restaurant critics the food often plays second-fiddle to their neurotic rumblings and elbow-in-rib glibness.

But here the food is re-plated in extraordinary – and frequently tedious – detail. Amateur photos flattened by bad lighting become evidence in reviews that read like lab reports. The minutiae of detail is reflected in a rating system that champions the decimal place.

There is also a tendency towards solo dining, the food demanding total concentration. I must admit to sympathising with this: nothing is more annoying than eating with someone unbothered by what’s in front of them. It’s not just the food: star chasers are also hot on the idiosyncrasies of service.

In one user’s report on Marylebone’s AngloThai, notes that despite the “attentive and friendly service”, “table-side saucing of dishes was sometimes a little messy, with spills and uneven pours on a couple of dishes”. There’s wonderful absurdity in such pedantry. Certain chefs and restaurants have garnered a cult-like status, marked for fierce debate.

While British star chasers are divided over whether Gordon Ramsay has still got it, there is almost universal agreement that three-starred Sketch in Mayfair should be immediately stripped down to one star. Indeed, one Baltimore-based chaser told me that although stoned college summers spent watching Kitchen Nightmares was his gateway into fine dining, eating at the three-starred Restaurant Gordon Ramsay during his 15-stars-in-10-days Euro trip was a let down. The Michelin Guide demands both idols and iconoclasm.

Signature dishes like Massimo Bottura’s Five Ages of Parmigiano Reggiano and Thomas Keller’s Oysters and Pearls take on a mythic quality, passed around and pored over like track listings on The Dark Side of the Moon. And then there are the bêtes noires. Take tart moulds, for instance: “Why does every two-three star place use the same lotus shaped tart mould?” “I’ve been bored with tart shells for at least a year.

Surely we’ve reached peak tart shell.” “I legit don’t get it. The last 30 tasting menus I’ve seen have the same fucking tart shells. I’ll take some fucking spheres over this shit.” I’ve heard similar conversations in the pub on a Saturday afternoon when the manager starts the same team that was thrashed the weekend before. ‘Let’s chase stars’ This intensity of conviction has allowed some fine dining aficionados to build up huge followings with millions of views on t