The Stars Come Out at Michelin : Gourmet: Europe’s top-selling guide, with its corps of gastronomic sleuths, can bring riches or ruin to a restaurant.

Their comments can provoke ruin--even suicide. These are the Michelin men, whose taste buds are trained to uphold the highest standards of French gastronomy. Their job is as lonely as a spy’s.

“Having Michelin stars is like having a sword of Damocles over your head,” said a slightly soured Jean-Andre Charial, the only three-star chef demoted in this year’s edition of the Michelin guide. He was finding it hard to swallow.

“Having stars means constant tension, being obsessed with food, never leaving the kitchen, never seeing friends or family,” he said. “Then they go and take one away.”

Michelin didn’t tell Charial exactly why L’Oustau de Baumaniere, in southern France, lost one of the stars first won 35 years ago by his grandfather, Raymond Thuillier, who at the age of 94 still hovers in the kitchen.

“They said it would give us publicity,” Charial said. “The worst is: They were right.”

The thick, red guide has gone a long way since its launch by the Michelin tire company in 1900 as an aid to the intrepid drivers of the world’s first automobiles.

Distributed free of charge, it listed bakeries and hardware stores that sold gasoline, gave a recipe for a home-made eye ointment to combat the effects of dust and discussed the trouble caused by horseshoe nails littering the roads.

With 650,000 copies now sold each year, it is Europe’s top-selling guide as well as the traveler’s bible on the finest restaurants and hotels of France and of some of its neighbors.

But how the book, which now runs to 1,200-pages, awards its stars and selects its prime establishments is a secret Michelin enjoys cultivating.

“Discretion is part of the company ethic,” Bernard Naegellen, director of the famed guides, told Reuters. “Why should we reveal our trade secrets? What would be the point?

“The only thing that matters to us is to keep our readers happy by producing an excellent guide.”

Naegellen, a soft-spoken hotel school graduate of about 50, made clear that, while he had agreed to a rare interview, there was absolutely no chance of meeting one of Michelin’s legendary inspectors--a corps of secret sleuths whose identity is about as well protected as that of a spy.

“It takes seven or eight years for an inspector to cover the whole of France,” Naegellen said in explaining how the identities are kept secret. “By the time he returns to his point of departure, people have forgotten his face.”

Most of the men whose persnickety tastes can bring ruin, riches or even suicide--as in the case of one restaurateur who lost his star in the 1960s--are hotel school graduates with 10 years professional experience, Naegellen said.

“They must be robust enough to cope with the many meals, fired by passion and not be afraid of solitude.”

Despite their lonely crusades across the land in quest of “that extra-special, out-of-the-way gem of a place,” as Naegellen put it, the Michelin tasters get no perks.

“We never reimburse liqueurs or aperitifs,” he said.

As for their probity, one of Michelin’s proudest qualities, new recruits are scrutinized during months of training.

“It goes without saying that our inspectors are honest,” he said. “Our reputation is such, however, that no French restaurateur or hotel-keeper would ever dream of paying a bribe or even offering a free meal or drink. We always pay.”

But how does Michelin give and take away its prized stars? What does it take to be in the top league of 19 three-star restaurants?

Naegellen explained that the 600-odd restaurants awarded a star--along with potential candidates--are visited incognito every 12 to 18 months, at least once but sometimes several times by a different inspector.

“They often don’t even know we’ve been,” he said.

During the same time span, another of his food sleuths will call, eat, pay the bill, then show his card for an on-the-record chat about the owner’s plans for brightening the decor or the food.

Notes are carefully compared at lengthy meetings in the Paris headquarters and a final decision taken collectively.

“What we look for is regularity. The food must be perfect all year-round, any time, because the bill is always the same,” Naegellen said.

“A three-star will stand out because of the finesse of the cooking, the quality of its products and the savoir-faire of the chef.”

The 10,000 more mundane hotels and non-star restaurants get an official visit about every 18 months, he said.

“We keep abundant files on restaurants. If there is a unanimous feeling about a place, we take a decision, but it can take several years.”

Although critics have questioned whether Michelin has enough inspectors to keep tabs on so many establishments, Naegellen refused to confirm popular rumors he had no more than 20.

He likewise shrugged off queries on Michelin’s often contested choices, such as why Tour d’Argent in Paris--not a gourmet favorite--was still among the heady top 19.

“We can feel whether a place is on the slide or on the up and up. We have a long tradition behind us, a special savoir-faire,” he said.

He added that the guide put a lot of stock in letters it receives from its readers--up to 300 a day.

Lastly, what was his favorite restaurant?

“I won’t tell you that either,” he laughed. “I believe a restaurant is a little like the theater--a place where you can set the stage according to your mood.

“A grand three-star restaurant will be ideal for a birthday, a small bistro for a friendly chat.”