The Detroit Michelin Green Guide is planned to be available in U.S. bookstores “in the next few days,” announced Philippe Orain, Michelin Travel Guides Editorial & Contents Global Director, at a press conference Tuesday, Dec. 10, at Michigan Central Station. The edition will also be available on shelves the U.K. and other English-speaking countries, as well as Amazon.com, he said.
As Hour Detroit’s Will Reaume first reported in October, the French edition has already been published. Currently, it’s on shelves in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Quebec, Orain said.
The Guide gives a three-star ranking to several Detroit landmarks, which means “worth a special journey.” This is Michelin’s highest possible ranking for an attraction, which it reserves for such landmarks as the Louvre in Paris.
In addition to the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Guide gives a three-star ranking to Downtown Detroit (as a whole), the Guardian Building, The Henry Ford Museum, and the Cranbrook Educational Community in Bloomfield Hills. Detroit is the 10th U.S. city that Michelin has ever created a Green Guide for.
“It’s really a pleasure to be back to Detroit,” Orain said Tuesday. “I know the U.S. pretty well, and I like America. But I don’t like all the cities. …[But] here I find there’s a true atmosphere. I feel that the people here like the city, and that makes the traveler that I am more comfortable when talking to Detroiters.”
Interestingly, the recently renovated Michigan Central, which Orain called “one of the most beautiful railway stations in the world,” had not opened before Michelin’s publishing deadline for the Green Guide. It still received two stars, which means “worth a detour.”
Towards the front of the book, the Guide features interviews with locals, including Saffron De Twah owner Omar Anani. It also covers points of interest, shops, and restaurants in Corktown, Mexicantown, Eastern Market, Midtown, New Center/Milwaukee Junction, Belle Isle, plus Dearborn and the suburbs “North of Detroit.” It touches on history and provides practical advice for first-time international travelers.
Visit Detroit, a nonprofit economic development organization dedicated to promoting metro Detroit, played an instrumental part in courting Michelin to publish the Green Guide, the company CEO Claude Molinari tells Hour Detroit. The effort to get the French tire company, which has published travel guides since 1900, to write about Detroit, has been at least two years in the making, Molinari said.
Michelin first became acquainted with Visit Detroit around 2013 at the U.S. Travel Association’s IPW, an annual trade fair where U.S. travel representatives meet with travel buyers and media outlets from as many as 60 countries around the world.
“Prior to 2022, we really did not have a French team that we were working with. It wasn’t an area that we were targeting,” Molinari said. “We started working with a French media team. We did an activation with the Detroit Pistons when they played a game in Paris [in 2023]. That’s where we started to work with Philippe and the Michelin team to say, listen, we’re really making inroads into Paris.”
Orain first visited Detroit in November 2023, spending four days in the city. Subsequently, he sent two authors earlier this year in March and April, who each spent between 10 days and two weeks in Detroit, as Hour Detroit previously reported.
“We had our team from the media side and the services side take them all over the region and the destination to really find the great opportunities to highlight different destination points in this book,” Molinari said.
So, can we expect Detroit to have Michelin-Starred restaurants in the future? The Michelin Red Guide awards highly sought-after Michelin Stars to fine dining establishments. Molinari certainly seems to think a Detroit Red Guide is within reach. “We’re starting to have those conversations now,” Molinari said Tuesday. “Philippe and I had breakfast this morning and we were talking about, ‘What are we going to do next?’”
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