How to Find the Next Big Restaurant Before the Hype, From ‘Knife Edge’ Host Jesse Burgess

For more than a century, the Michelin Guide, a tire company’s marketing plan that turned into the world’s most famous restaurant guide, has cultivated an aura of exclusivity — white-tablecloth temples, anonymous inspectors sworn to secrecy, and career-changing recognition that can boost business. Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars, the new Apple TV+ series produced by Gordon Ramsay and hosted by Jesse Burgess, takes viewers behind the scenes of what it’s like for chefs chasing stars. And with that, rare direct access to Michelin inspectors.

“I think it’s incredulous that they have kept everything so secret for 125 years,” Burgess told me. “And the fact that they granted this access … was monumental and groundbreaking.”

Words like that could read as hyperbole. He wasn’t exaggerating. Still, the inspector interviews that appear in the series almost feel like they were set up for someone in the witness protection program. “What you’re seeing on screen is an actor,” Burgess explained. “The back of their heads and a manipulated voice. They didn’t want any of our producers to actually see a real life Michelin [inspector]. So it was on a Zoom call, no camera, no face, just a recorded voice that then had to be manipulated.”

In 125 years, Michelin has permitted almost no peeks behind its curtain. The few cracks in the facade — Pascal Rémy’s 2004 tell-all memoir L’Inspecteur se met à table, which got him fired; rare anonymous interviews with former inspectors reflecting on their lonely, thousand-meals-a-year jobs; and documentaries like Michelin Stars: Tales from the Kitchen or the BBC’s The Madness of Perfection — were exceptions that kept the inspectors’ faces hidden. Never before has Michelin itself sanctioned cameras to follow its critics’ world as it unfolds.

Even after months of filming and the access the Knife Edge team had, mystery remains. “We know a lot more than we did before going into Knife Edge, but there’s still so much we don’t know.”

What is clear? Following some of the top chefs and restaurateurs in the world, both established and on their way up, makes for good viewing for anyone who travels with a food-first mentality. The show goes behind the scenes at restaurants hoping to earn a listing months before the 2024 Michelin ceremony announcements.

Over eight episodes, the Knife Edge team trails chefs in New York (Coqodaq, The Musket Room, Nōksu), Chicago (Cariño, Esmé, Feld), the Nordics (Aure, Jordnær, Knystaforsen), the U.K. (Caractère, House, Wilsons), Mexico (Em, Máximo), Italy (Agriturismo Ferdy, Kresios), and California (Harbor House, Pasjoli, Pasta|Bar). The restaurants range from the expected — white tablecloth, big wine lists and even bigger prices — to the surprising — a restaurant accessed by going into the New York City subway system, a fried-chicken restaurant.

What plays an equal part in making Knife Edge so engaging is Burgess himself.

Burgess is the co-creator and frontman of TOPJAW, the London-based, viral food-and-travel YouTube show that matches interviews, expert insider recommendations, and lots of eating. With well over a million followers across platforms and tens of millions of views, TOPJAW can bring hordes of diners to the featured locations. The success of the show boils down to Burgess and cofounder Will Warr’s charisma and connections — the top celebrity and chef names in whatever city or region they’re filming are brought on to give recommendations for where to go next depending on the episode’s theme. Their honesty goes a long way, too, in an industry that is often defined by hype and influence campaigns. (TOPJAW isn’t paid by the restaurants it features.)

Even the most popular creators can stumble in the shift from an owned-and-operated media channel defined by a specific voice to a big-name project. For Burgess, it felt natural.

“When you get a call saying, ‘Hey, there’s this project being produced by Gordon Ramsay, going on Apple TV+, with exclusive access to Michelin, filming all around the world documenting the epic journey of chefs striving to get Michelin stars,’ that sort of feels like something’s been designed in a lab for me,” he said.

With Knife Edge, he’s been given the chance to pull back the curtain on the most secretive food institution in the world. The show captures the tension inside kitchens with big aspirations in each city: chefs striving to win their first star, others fighting to maintain or stretch toward a second or third.

Viewers get to see the late nights, personal sacrifice, and cracks in composure when something goes wrong as well as the Chef’s Table-quality glamor shots. On the other side are the inspectors who change names, emails, and phone numbers to stay hidden. There are also the emotional gambits: a chef questioning whether the stress of this pursuit is worth it, or agonizing over a single detail in plating that could sway a star. There’s even one instance where a restaurant is able to narrow down who the inspector was thanks to a dinner menu that changed every night.

Knife Edge shows chefs fighting exhaustion and doubt in pursuit of a star. It doesn’t always work out. Who gets recognized can feel preordained for anyone on the outside, but there’s always an upward swell of recognition before the annual Michelin ceremony. Burgess has spent a decade with TOPJAW and often finds spots before they become the next it place to dine. Knife Edge takes it straight to the food world’s biggest stage with behind-the-scenes access to restaurants on the brink of global attention.

When my conversation with Burgess turned from Michelin to travel, I asked him the question every food-driven traveler wants answered: how do you find the next great restaurant before it fills your social media feed and requires reservations months in advance? Having a very clued-in Apple TV+ production staff and a team led by Gordon Ramsay helps.

“Michelin, understandably, gave the crew absolutely no inside track,” Burgess said. “There were no tip offs. There was nothing. I didn’t do this, this was all the producers and the wonderful researchers, they were the ones that beavered away and found these awesome restaurants. But having Gordon Ramsay was very helpful to identify which restaurants were perhaps in the running.” Two to four restaurants are featured in each episode, and that required people agreeing to have camera crews filming a high-stakes quest (two stars can lead to a 40 percent boost in business) that may never be completed. “But the truth of it is that the production team had to film with far more restaurants than that.”

Still, there are things the average traveler without a production crew and one of the world’s most famous chefs can do to find a spot early with a little planning.

How to spot Michelin Star worthy restaurants before they’re big, according to Jesse Burgess

1. Talk to, and trust, chefs

“What we do at TOPJAW and I think what Knife Edge has done is listen to the chefs in the industry,” Jesse told me. “The chefs aren’t following the hype machine. They’re actually just going to, you know, a restaurant that they’ve heard is amazing or their chef friend has opened and they really love what they’re doing with food.”

It won’t always be what you expect. While filming in Mexico City, Jesse was taken to a roadside birria taco joint he described as “an incredibly memorable meal.” When local chefs are buzzing about a place — whether it’s a cart or a fine-dining room — it’s worth paying attention.

2. Look for obsessive chefs and pay attention to the details

Constant menu tweaks and restless experimentation can be a giveaway. So can the amount of attention that’s paid to everything beyond what the food actually tastes like.

“In an episode in the Nordics, you have Nicolai Tram at Knystaforsen in this remote part of Sweden in the forest,” Burgess said. “Gorgeous restaurant, gorgeous bloke. And he paints his dishes in watercolor because he cares more about what the dish will look like.

I asked, ‘Oh, isn’t that a little bit, you know, that’s a bit pretentious, isn’t it? Why do you care what the dish looks like over what it tastes like?’ And he just turned to me and said, ‘No, no, Jesse, I know what this dish will taste like. I just don’t know how I’m going to make it look.’”

3. Don’t only look for white tablecloths

“We debunk a lot of Michelin myths on this show,” Jesse said. “The common misconception is that, okay, it has a Michelin star, that must mean it’s got white tablecloth, the kitchen is separate from the dining room, and everything is very fancy. And really that’s so far from the truth.

He added that “what Knife Edge has done incredibly well is profile all the different types of ways you can win a Michelin star. You’ve got fried chicken, you have a New York subway restaurant that can’t use gas. On the flip side, you’ve got an old sawmill in remote Sweden where everything is cooked outside 365 days a year on live bonfires.”

4. When you’re there, become the engaged diner

One of my favorite parts of Knife Edge was watching the chefs and restaurant teams try to guess which guest might be a Michelin inspector. Things like writing notes out on your phone and taking photos to remember what you ate were often signifiers. So was dining alone.

“I recommend that anybody goes into a restaurant as a solo diner and takes a notepad with them and then takes a lot of photos, because I reckon you’d get some seriously good service,” Burgess jokes.