Great food requires great effort
Allan McFarland has a tattoo of the Michelin Man on his left arm. When his restaurant gets a Michelin Star, he plans to add one to the tattoo.
“It’s just projecting,” McFarland said. “I’m gonna go for it.
A Michelin Star, awarded by the Michelin tire company, recognizes exceptionally good restaurants. It’s the highest award in the restaurant industry.
Every year, anonymous inspectors tour the world, secretly testing restaurants to see if they deserve one, two or three stars.
As of 2025, there were only 3,783 Michelin Star restaurants worldwide.
“I know it’s crazy. But I’m really driven to do it,” he said.
Two months ago, McFarland started as the chef at the Big Bear Bar and Grill, owned by Rolf Hensche. He will also be the chef for Hensche’s new restaurant, The Noble Nosh, which will soon open.
If the pair succeeds in getting a Michelin Star on one or both of these restaurants, it will help put Ellijay on the map in new ways.
But reaching the stars is no easy task. Getting a restaurant there resembles planning a space mission. Every part must be perfect, the crew must be brilliant and the course set must be flawless.
“It’ll be a lot of hours, a lot of building, a lot of developing myself and creating things,” McFarland said.
Staff must master new skills. Fresh, local ingredients must take center stage on the plate.
“I’m coming from kitchens where you’re making everything from scratch. And when I started working here, everything was basically brought in,” McFarland said.
To get a star, this style of cooking had to change, he said.
The food should taste better and look more beautiful. Everything must blend into one harmonious experience.
“It’s what I love to do. I’m gonna get everything until it happens,” McFarland said.
He knows the process well. Before coming to Ellijay, McFarland worked at three different Michelin Star restaurants including Chicago’s Alinea, Somni in Los Angeles, and Robuchon in Las Vegas.
“Alinea really developed my palate, and I’m trying to use what they taught me and push it onto my guys,” he said.
In his first two months at the Big Bear, McFarland has worked to overhaul the restaurant.
During the day, he teaches his staff to taste the food, develop their palates and take their cooking to the next level.
At 2 a.m. in the morning, he is already awake to examine and perfect the Big Bear’s sourdough bread. He’s been doing so almost since the restaurant opened.
“I’ve always been interested in bread,” he said. “I think we’re there without how the loaf is and the hydration. And the form of the loaf will be beautiful.”
Good bread requires time and patience. When cut open, it should have small, delicate bubbles of air and a faint but clear grain.
“It’s all about time and fermentation,” he said. “It’s really cool watching it just be alive, and you just get to experience it.”
McFarland’s method as a chef is to pick a single element of a restaurant’s menu and obsess over it until it is perfect.
Once he feels completely satisfied with the result, he moves to the next thing.
Just because the Big Bear offers typical bar staples doesn’t let him relax his pursuit of perfection.
“I want to go full-force into it and get really technical, and Rolf’s always telling me, ‘You’ve got to calm down,’” he said. “But that’s what I will be able to do at Noble Nosh.”
As of last week, the bread finally seems ready. But that just means he can move on to the next thing.
“We’re about to open Noble Nosh,” he said.
Working under tight pressure and high standards gives professional kitchens a reputation for being unpleasant places to work. McFarland said he hopes that he can lead his staff into success with kindness.
“I have a few hardcore people back there that want to learn the craft, and they’re willing to go through this with me,” he said. “That’s 100 percent what you need.”
McFarland can’t map out how much he has progressed toward a Michelin Star, he said. Restaurants don’t work that way.
“I don’t think you can really calculate that,” he said. “Because personally, I feel like I still need a lot of growth. I’m always chasing something. It’s never-ending.”
Overhauling a restaurant mid-operation or opening a new one both pose challenges. But there’s no other way for McFarland to put the star on his tattoo.
“What we’re trying to do at Big Bear is just serve the community good food,” he said. “And if we can reach the people with it, then we’ve succeeded.”