Jean-Luc Naret of France rewards stars by awarding them stars.

“It’s recognition of excellence, something that’s hard-earned by establishments,” the director of Michelin Guides and Maps said the other day during a breezy visit to New York.

New York, of course, figures prominently in the Michelin constellation: It’s one of the dozens of cities for which the 106-year-old French company produces an annual guide, complete with stars that are so coveted by restaurants that the absence of one can cause frissons of alarm among owners and chuckles among rivals. In scarcely four months since the publication of the New York guide, more than 100,000 copies have been sold. (Globally, 20 million copies of Michelin guides are sold each year.)

Pleased that its New York debut this year was commercially and critically successful, Mr. Naret is expanding the Michelin guides to other cities in America. San Francisco will be next, and then Miami. Washington, Chicago, Las Vegas and Los Angeles will follow. Mr. Naret plans to publish guides to Asian cities as well.

“We were very strong in Europe for years and years,” Mr. Naret said. “But when I came to Michelin three years ago, I was determined to cross the Atlantic and do American cities – and what better place to begin than New York?”

Only four New York restaurants were given the highest number of stars – three – and they did not include the one in which Mr. Naret was dining on this day. Earlier in the day, the owners of the Four Seasons had signaled some displeasure that Michelin hadn’t even awarded one star to the 47-year-old restaurant, while 36 other restaurants received one or more stars. A newcomer across Park Avenue, Lever House, had won one.

What gives?

Mr. Naret smiled sweetly. After several visits last year, he said, his inclination had been to bestow at least one star on the restaurant. But none of Michelin’s four or five inspectors who’d dined there separately shared that view.

So why didn’t he overrule his inspectors?

“I rarely overrule our inspectors,” Mr. Naret said. “The integrity of the evaluation process is paramount. You may disagree with our choice of stars, but no one can question our methods.”

The methods are meticulous. Michelin employs 80 full-time inspectors, of whom 15 work in France. (It takes three to five years to train Michelin inspectors fully.) Inspectors anonymously visit each restaurant or hotel three or four times in a particular city. In 2005, for example, each inspector traveled about 18,500 miles, spent 150 nights in hotels, and had 300 lunches and dinners.

They spent more than $10 million on their investigations. (Of about 45,000 restaurants that figure in Michelin guides, only 1,500 are starred.) In New York alone, inspectors spent $1 million selecting 507 of the city’s 23,000 restaurants.

“We view our expenditures as an investment, not as a cost – it’s a question of strengthening our brand-equity image,” Mr. Naret said. “We do not accept any sponsorship; we do not accept free meals. If there’s one thing that I emphasize about our research, it’s integrity, integrity, and integrity.”

Four restaurants, Per Se, Le Bernardin, Alain Ducasse, and Jean-Georges, received a three-star rating for providing “an exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey,” Mr. Naret said.

Four other restaurants received a two-star rating for providing “excellent cooking, worth a detour”; 31 received a one-star rating for being “a very good restaurant in its category,” and 468 additional restaurants were selected for providing a quality experience that Michelin recommends trying, Mr. Naret said.

“Our stars are not engraved in marble but in crystal – which is to say that, like crystal, they can shatter,” Mr. Naret said, alluding to the fact that Michelin has been known to withdraw stars from establishments that do not measure up to the company’s continuing scrutiny. Famous chefs have been known to spiral into depression when thus demoted; not long ago, a French chef committed suicide.

How does Mr. Naret deal with the pressures of awarding stars?

“You cannot please everybody,” he said.

One of France’s most popular public figures, Mr. Naret has a robust record in the hospitality industry, having managed and built luxury hotels for the last 20 years.

The only child of an insurance industry executive, Charles Naret, and his wife, Simone, Mr. Naret attended all the right schools and graduated with distinction from Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne in Switzerland.

Hotels were his first love.

“As a child, I would point to hotels whenever my parents took me for walks – and say, ‘I want to own that one, and that one,'” Mr. Naret said.

His route to the hotel industry was through the railway. At 21, he obtained the prestigious job of manager of the revived Orient Express train to Venice from Paris through sheer luck.

“I was supposed to be the food and beverage manager on the inaugural journey – and he [the train manager] fell ill with nerves,” Mr. Naret recalled. “So I was given an instant field promotion!”

He showed self-confidence and finesse in handling the job.

“I believe in always being optimistic,” Mr. Naret said. “Give me any job, and my first reaction is, ‘Yes, I can do it!’ I’ve always had confidence in life.”

Such an attitude – and his demonstrated competence – won him the backing of major investors in subsequent years as Mr. Naret built hotels in various resorts, including Barbados. He also won the loyalty of colleagues through his collegial but strict management style.

One colleague even composed a verse about Mr. Naret in appreciation: “Il nous a tenu au bord, il nous a demande de voler, il nous a pousse – et nous sommes alles voler.”(“He stood us at the edge, he asked us to fly, he pushed us – and we went flying.”)

Praise of this sort embarrasses Mr. Naret, not least because he believes that the key to a service industry such as his – hospitality and publishing – is teamwork.

“I feel very proud to be part of an institution that’s so much bigger than the reputation of any one person,” Mr. Naret said. “I always believe in taking one’s job seriously, but not oneself.”