MY rendezvous with the man from Michelin is in an unnamed eaterie in London. The restaurant has to remain incognito, because this inspector has agreed to give me tips on how he rates our lunch, although he is emphatic that this is not a formal inspection. Michelin doesn't allow a public view of its operations, otherwise “a little bit of the mystique goes”.

I'm meeting Derek Bulmer, who edits Michelin's Great Britain and Ireland guide. His photograph won't be adorning this page lest his cover is blown, but I can reveal that he isn't a large man, though he eats out four or five times a week, has been with the guide 30 years, and doesn't exercise.

The renowned gastronome's bible doesn't include the kind of detailed criticism he gives me - that the tinny background music is “odd”, that the list of starters is definitely limited (“when you are reading the menu for the third time, you know you are scratching around”) and that his main course of skate is overcooked and dry.

Probably the only good words he has are for the dessert, a medley of very light sponge with coffee cream, mango and roast hazelnuts, which he judges a “nicely conceived dish” that “didn't look attractive but tastes good”.

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By contrast, in the guide, a restaurant is either recommended or not - and this one is, though I wonder for how long.

Exactly what is included in the famous red books recently came under attack by world-renowed chefs led by Marco Pierre White, who complained that Michelin's standards around the world were different, with at least 50 restaurants in England as good as the two-star restaurants in New York.

His voice is just one of the many criticisms that have been fired at the guide - for being too French, concentrating too much on haute cuisine, even giving a high mark to a restaurant that hadn't even opened in its 2005 Benelux guide.

Most famously, the long-term Michelin inspector Pascal Remy claimed in 2004 that many restaurants were relisted year after year without being inspected.

Bulmer shrugs it all off. “Food is by nature subjective, but we try to get people to be as objective as possible,” he says. To do that, inspectors are fully salaried - there are 70 in Europe alone - and are recruited from the catering industry after at least five years' experience, before undergoing six months' training.

“The worst-case scenario is that we inspect every property every 18 months, but Michelin-star restaurants are inspected two or three times a year.”

Those stars - the envy of other food guides - actually comprise a tiny percentage of all the restaurants in a guide that now includes more than 500 pubs, plus the value rating denoted by the Bib Gourmand. It is they, though, that attract most of the publicity, and, thus, controversy.

The awards of well-qualified critics, with whom you may or may not agree, they also chart the rise of good English cuisine, from just 25 stars in the first guide in 1974 to 122 now.

“The many awful meals I've had were all a long time ago,” Bulmer says before describing how far English food has come since the Seventies, when ridiculously long menus were a sign that everything came straight out of the freezer.

“I remember the first time I saw a handwritten menu saying 'this produce was available locally at the market' and it was a breath of fresh air.” I'm starting to think that the lot of a Michelin inspector, with an endless supply of wonderful food, must be a happy one.

Actually, it's pretty solitary, with lots of merging into the background - “we don't inspect somewhere in the Scottish Isles dressed in a pinstripe suit”, plus an occupational hazard of its own.

“I have had a few food poisonings in my time and an unscheduled visit to hospital in Ireland after a dodgy mussel,” Bulmer admits

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