Fat Guy

If you're talking about Grand Sichuan dishes #30 and #31, I haven't done the side-by-side in about four years but as I recall #30 is cold and #31 is warm, and #30 is more along the lines of the cold noodles you get at Chinese-American restaurants around town, with a sesame-peanut sauce (as well as some chili, as an option) whereas #31 is a small bowl of thin, warm noodles with a potent mix of hot chili oil, Sichuan peppercorns and garlic. All of which is strange because the Chinese folks I've spoken to about dan dan noodles have all said they're supposed to be cold. I wonder what "dan dan" actually means. Maybe it's a broad term.

Actually it's one word these days: ZAGATSURVEY. If you look on the cover of the guides what you see is, for example: ZAGATSURVEY® 2006 -------------- New York City Restaurants

Pedro, the answer to your question is no, nobody (well, other than Pan!) thought Katz's had a chance. But then the New York guide came out, and it turned out not to use the same standards as the European guide. In the New York guide there are inclusions like Sripraphai and New York Noodle Town, cheap-eats places that would never be included in European Michelin guides. So, it seems that in tailoring the guide to the American market, Michelin has tried to include various best-in-class dives. If so, the omission of Katz's is a monumental screwup, especially when the inferior Second Avenue Deli is included. It puts the lie to Michelin's claim to be searching for the best food, and on the terms Michelin has set for its New York guide it's a glaring omission. At the low end, Michelin is confused, inconsistent and out of touch. Mike Steinberger in Slate, referenced above, does an excellent job pointing out Michelin's failings at the high end. These are mostly the arguments that have been made here, but Steinberger builds the case relentlessly, with all the most compelling arguments assembled in one place and sequenced properly. (He even references this eG Forums topic, and me). His conclusion: http://www.slate.com/id/2129306/ The Cuozzo piece is, standing alone, amusing for the way it exposes Michelin's shortcuts. Maybe, instead of spending so much money on a publication party at the Guggenheim, Michelin should have hired a fact checker. The question that remains is whether this is just the beginning. Journalists and eGullet types have only had the book for a few days so far. It will be a few weeks before a significant number of people have a chance to read it cover to cover.

Just to be clear, my post quoted above was in response to a query about Katz's from a vegetarian! ("i'm a pesce-vegetarian and was wondering if there's anything i could eat there that's really good").

Oakapple, I think there are two ways to process the information. What we have here are quite a few convincing objections. There are ethical ones -- not just the fabrication issue, but also the various issues raised in the Remy book such as misleading the public about the frequency of inspections, and inappropriate political alliances with chefs (the shared publicist issue in New York would seem to track that). There are substantive ones -- specific restaurants that are not borderline calls but, rather, major screwups like the inclusion of Boathouse Cafe and the omission of Katz's (I would distinguish those from within-the-margin-of-error screwups like the failure to give a star to Blue Hill or Tasting Room). There are process ones -- mainly that we don't know the process, the qualifications of the inspectors or much of anything because it's all done in secret and we're just asked to trust Michelin (apparently, lots of people are willing to do that). Now, we could take that information and, in every instance, say "That's just one objection and it's not enough to prove that the guide is worthless." Or we could say that, taken together, this is a pretty damning set of problems -- and this is only based on the early reactions; there hasn't been enough time yet to cross-reference and find out if there are any listings that contain factual errors that might trigger further investigation, there haven't been any reports of troublesome encounters with the inspectors, etc., and it's hardly unfair, given the already established record, to wonder about that. I don't see why we should be so eager to give Michelin the benefit of the doubt when Michelin hasn't done anything to earn it. No, we haven't seen the kind of evidence that would indicate total cluelessness. And nobody said that. For me, the question is why should anybody listen to what "they think are the best restaurants"? They have no experience, no standing, no expertise in this polyglot market -- all they've ever done well is rate French restaurants in France -- and they haven't hooked into any knowledgeable sources. So what value does this sometimes random and other times derivative list, that includes second-rate restaurants like the Boathouse Cafe and omits first-in-class ones like Katz's, have? Are the inspectors particularly expert? We don't even know who they are. Is the process particularly rigorous? We don't even know what it is beyond the meaningless claim that there has to be some sort of consensus. Does Michelin hold the franchise on rigor, integrity or anything else? The indications are that it does not. So why should anybody take seriously what Michelin has to say about restaurants in New York?

Yes, both are listed. Not starred, but included.

It's not a question of Katz's deserving or not deserving a star. Katz's isn't in the guide at all. It's such a glaring omission that, even standing alone, it would be a strong indication of cluelessness about the local restaurant culture. If you want to go to the dozen or so places that are ultimate New York dining experiences, you go to Peter Luger, you go to Papaya King (also not in the guide), you go to Katz's, you go to a few upscale European-derived places, you go to a few Asian places. This isn't a question of lowest common denominator popularity -- this is the guidance you're going to get from most knowledgeable, experienced observers of the New York dining scene who have international perspective and exposure. And while these places are, to be sure, informal, the guide includes NY Noodle Town, Jackson Diner, Sripraphai and other quite informal, downmarket places. The guide's claim is that it tries to find the best of a type of cuisine. Yet it can't even get the basic top places listed. Of course this omission is only one of many objections, which we've already gone through -- so it's hard to see how anybody, at page 8 of this discussion, could be saying this is the only or worst criticism that has been raised. For example, writing about restaurants that haven't opened yet is of course more serious as an institutional criticism, but that's a separate point.

Nathan, the core selling points of the Michelin guide are -- as best I can tell based on the vague marketing literature -- that it has great integrity, expertise and scope. It is hardly a red herring to point to attributes of the guide that contradict those claims. The seemingly lowered standards and Michelin's dodgy record of conduct in Europe (not to mention the contradiction between the high falutin' language of independence and the coziness and shared publicists with the chefs being rated in the New York guide) go directly to the question of integrity. The French restaurant choices are pretty solid, but the laughable categorization and randomness of inclusion with respect to other cuisines goes to the issue of expertise -- the people who put this guide together seem to know very little about, for example, Chinese food. In terms of scope, exclusions like Katz's deli -- widely acknowledged by a large cross-section of people who comprehend deli as having the best pastrami in the world -- indicate some pretty sad methodology, and what we've learned from the tell-all book published in France is that it's possible Michelin didn't visit Katz's at all or that only one possibly underinformed inspector did -- or maybe more did, but we have no way of knowing because Michelin keeps all it proceedings secret, all the credentials of its inspectors secret, and asks simply for our trust. So, if the core selling points turn out to be unsupportable, all we're left with is that the Michelin guide is not as good as a list that a bunch of people who dine out a lot could create in an evening.

Oakapple, thanks for the rundown on the guide's presentation. The photos and extended text (though not the silly recipes) are accommodations that make sense: Michelin knew that its vague, one-sentence proclamations would carry little weight with American audiences. So the fuller descriptions are a good move, and should eventually be incorporated into all of Michelin's guides. Needless to say, the decision to expand the textual descriptions speaks loudly about Michelin's intended audience for the New York guide: were the idea just to sell it to current Michelin users who may be traveling to America, they'd have made it just like all the other guides. Rather, Michelin sees this as the first step in establishing an American restaurant-and-hotel guidebook market.

Granted there's no way to prove it, and there's probably no way to convince anybody on the point. Nonetheless, I feel strongly based on the sum total of my experience -- which is less than that of some people and more than that of most -- that Michelin lowered the three-star standard to include Le Bernardin. It's not that every Michelin three-star restaurant is the same, and it's not that I've been to all of them. But I've been to a pretty good cross-section, from the urban luxe places like Ducasse in Paris to Georges Blanc which I imagine is as bistro-like in feel as a Michelin three-star restaurant could possibly be without breaking the system. And the thing is, every one of those restaurants has been categorically different from Le Bernardin. Yes, it's possible to have three Michelin stars and be a bustling, energetic restaurant. Yes, it's possible to have three Michelin stars and serve simply prepared Bresse chicken the way Georges Blanc does. But those departures don't add up to an accommodation for a restaurant like Le Bernardin. Georges Blanc, for example, is arguably the ultimate expression of that sort of cuisine. The chef is the head of the whole Bresse chicken organization -- you're probably getting the best example of that product available in the whole world when you go to Georges Blanc, and it is prepared and served with great precision -- the kind of precision one almost never sees in the United States (not to mention, one rarely sees ingredients that good here). Le Bernardin, while it serves excellent fish, doesn't offer any ingredients that I'd consider revelatory -- it's more a question of Le Bernardin getting as good fish as anybody else gets, just more of it. And there's nothing about any dish I've had at Le Bernardin that feels ultimate, groundbreaking or definitive -- nor are there any particularly great renditions of the classics. I've had fish at Le Bernardin that shouldn't even have been served at a no-star restaurant. It's a terrific restaurant, but one to which I'd probably give one Michelin star. Maybe two. Definitely not three. Some may have other opinions. I think so far just one person has suggested that the three-star rating makes sense, and that struck me as a non-emphatic endorsement. I think we could probably get rough agreement that Per Se and Alain Ducasse at the Essex House are like Michelin three-star restaurants. Jean Georges is sort of like one -- I don't think it quite makes the cut but I wouldn't say it's so far off the mark from Arpege. But Le Bernardin? Well, I'd like to hear from those who think it's a Michelin three-star restaurant for real.

I've dined at eight of France's Michelin three-star restaurants one or more times, including at La Cote St. Jacques six times (I've also attended Jean-Michel Lorain's cooking classes there). I've also been to several two- and one-star restaurants. The last time I dined at La Cote St. Jacques, about a month before it was demoted from three stars to two, my entree was lobster in three services, each more refined, labor-intensive and Michelin three-star-worthy than anything I've ever had at Le Bernardin, a restaurant I've been to at least a dozen times. When you get back to Le Bernardin, please do let us know whether you think it's a Michelin three-star restaurant.

By the way, I don't mean to dis Le Bernardin. Eric Ripert is a superb, talented chef. Maguy Le Coze is a great restaurateur. I love the food there and it's one of the best restaurants in New York, and certainly the best seafood restaurant. I'm sure if Ripert and Le Coze wanted to have a Michelin three-star restaurant, they could make it happen. But Le Bernardin just isn't a Michelin three-star restaurant. It's a restaurant that makes money -- and deservedly so -- according to a formula that doesn't allow for a three-star approach. Except, it does have three Michelin stars, so it is a Michelin three-star restaurant.

Why is that? ← Can you flesh that statement out a little bit for us Steven? What would you say would be the main differences? ← Start with the menu: http://www.le-bernardin.com/menu_dinner.html This is relatively casual food by three-star standards. It's what you'd expect to see at the one- or maybe low two-star level. On the plate, it is equally limited: these are not the labor-intensive creations of a three-star kitchen, nor are they examples of minimalist brilliance or the avant garde. They're just good fish dishes. We're talking about a restaurant that puts out a lot of food quickly in any given evening. In the three-star universe, it's more like a luxe brasserie than a temple of gastronomy. It's crowded, noisy and rushed by three-star standards. The service is good but basic.

Dumpling House on Eldridge will, reluctantly, produce most of the items on its menu board. It's over at Fried Dumpling on Allen where they're hard liners from the John Belushi "Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, no Coke, Pepsi" school of restaurant operations. I enjoy getting into those extended dialogs with them so much that I even do it when there's no audience. By the way, they sell the dumplings frozen at a discount: 30 for $5. With some practice -- you need to be fearless about combining water and hot oil -- I've been able to make them come out almost as well at home as in the restaurant. And at home you can apply superior condiments: actual Sriracha instead of the watered down product the five-for-a-dollar dumpling places put in the Sriracha bottles, and actual black vinegar instead of the brown colored water they put in the other Sriracha bottles. Kathleen, have you noticed that some of the plastic Heinz ketchup bottles are now the color of ketchup, so that no matter how little there is in the bottle it looks full? What's your opinion on this? I'd like to know.

On the A&E Biography episode about Tim and Nina Zagat, there is a segment devoted to pronunciation of Zagat. Tim and Nina seemed to say it, as best I can recall (I don't have the tape with me right now), with the emphasis on the first syllable: ZAH-git. When I get home next week, if somebody reminds me, I'll try to pull those few seconds of audio from the videotape and post it here.

Michelin has gotten away with much in Europe that it won't likely get away with here. Because Michelin is so well established and widely respected in Europe, and has little in the way of serious competition or detractors, the embarrassing incidents have been few and far between. But the warning signs are there: remember in February when Michelin was caught red handed (no pun intended) rating a restaurant in the Benelux guide, L'Ostend Queen, that hadn't yet opened? Likewise, fallout from Pascal Rémy's book exposing many of Michelin's practices, L'Inspecteur se met à Table (in which we learn that Michelin visits restaurants far less often than it implies, has only five full time inspectors for all of France, engages in political favoritism and more -- you can read the seven main contentions summarized in paulbrussel's post here), has been minimal, but unless Michelin has turned over a new leaf it's only a matter of time, now that Michelin has shown up with its grand claims in New York, before investigative journalism catches up with the American Michelin operation. That Ducasse and Michelin share the same publicist, for example, is the sort of thing that spurs reporters to ask more questions. Right now, Michelin has the PR momentum on account of its lavish launch effort. It's also, like the Beard Awards, insidious in the way it coopts the chefs to whom it gives good rankings. But too many of the New York restaurant elite have been snubbed by Michelin -- the code of silence won't be nearly as rigorous here. In terms of Michelin's substantive weaknesses, needless to say Michelin does include plenty of non-French restaurants and French avant-garde restaurants in its guides. The issue is that Michelin's qualifications are not relevant when it comes to these types of restaurants. Michelin is very good (in the instances where they system is allowed to function rather than being overruled by the company's politics and marketing considerations) at categorizing and ranking French haute cuisine restaurants that operate within Michelin's universe. That is to say, French restaurants in France that are trying to earn Michelin stars are easy for the Michelin inspectors to get their arms around. But the system was not designed to accommodate Sush Yasuda, or even Pierre Gagnaire. That Michelin has managed to give three stars to a few obviously world-class non-French restaurants like El Bulli doesn't mean the system is working for contemporary Spanish cuisine or contemporary anything.

Thought you meant under 2000 for the monthly leasing fee . . . Love the Ducasse recipe in the Spoon book that uses a "flocking gun."

I'm not sure I'd characterize Michelin as pretty close to perfect. For example, I don't think there's anybody who has dined at Michelin three-star restaurants in Europe who seriously thinks Le Bernardin is a Michelin three-star restaurant. I can't imagine anybody in the Michelin organization thinks so either. Which means it was a marketing move, and a patronising one at that. If your claim is that your guides are so great because of their rigorous processes, and then you blow it by disregarding what you know to be the case, you are a lot less than pretty close to perfect. Nor do I think Michelin is going to be able to get away with the same kind of secrecy that it has always exercised in Europe. If you come to play in the New York media market, you've got to be prepared to do a lot more than recite platitudes about how your ratings represent a consensus. You've also got to be able to prove your expertise. From the list, we can tell several of the inclusions are either cynical (three stars for Le Bernardin) or absurdly clueless (Boathouse Cafe). We know Michelin is incompetent in its non-Western evaluations. It will be interesting to see what we learn when the system is placed under the magnifying glass by American media.

TurboChef. Two-minute souffle.

I've got to disagree with that statement. There are types of restaurants. I don't even think it's accurate to say "a restaurant is a restaurant" when speaking about two restaurants across the street from one another, no less on different continents. The Michelin system is a rigorously developed (though not consistently honored by Michelin) system for rating French restaurants in France that happen to be striving for Michelin recognition. It's a self-perpetuating system that only works if a critical mass of establishments are buying into it. Once Michelin strays from the familiar and gets into non-French restaurants -- be it a Japanese restaurant in Paris or an American restaurant in New York -- the system collapses. It is simply not equipped to evaluate a polyglot dining culture outside of France, and the farther away the guide gets from France the less coherent it becomes. Recognizing some token ethnic restaurants and lowering standards for marketing purposes can't repair Michelin's fundamental unsuitability for any task other than rating French restaurants in France. It is barely adequate to that task anymore, given the expanding diversity of French haute cuisine styles. It was more relevant when everybody was cooking with Escoffier as the frame of reference. Beginning with Nouvelle Cuisine and especially with the rise of the culinary avant garde, Michelin has increasingly become an anachronism.

Yes, Michelin claims that "Stars are awarded by the Michelin inspectors to restaurants offering the finest cooking, regardless of the style of cuisine and the level of comfort." And it's simply not true.

If you look at it the way Michelin seems to look at restaurants in France, the primary difference between Daniel on the one hand and Le Bernardin and Jean Georges on the other hand is size. Jean Georges is a tiny restaurant, and Le Bernardin while larger is still operating at a relatively small scale. Daniel is immense. It handles hundreds of covers on a busy a night, and that's not even counting the event space. Daniel also turns tables more aggressively than any of the other New York Times four-star places. Daniel Boulud, as a chef/restaurateur, is one of the greats. And the top-level meal you can get at Daniel is as haute as the top-level meal you can get most anywhere. And there are a lot of really nice touches at Daniel, including a great bread program. But the restaurant is not organized in such a way as to have a top-level Michelin three-star-like baseline. If you just go to Daniel and order three courses from the standard menu, you'll get excellent food but it won't be like Michelin three-star food. If you order a tasting menu, you may get closer to that sort of experience. Whereas, if you go to Jean Georges and you order three dishes from the menu you'll get something that, to me, seems a solid notch higher than at Daniel. And by that I don't mean it necessarily tastes better, but rather that in the hierarchy of formal Michelin-type haute cuisine the basic offerings at Daniel are not as haute as the basic offerings at Jean Georges or Le Bernardin. Likewise, the service at Daniel is not as refined and focused as at Jean Georges, though it is probably on par with Le Bernardin. The thing is, Michelin just isn't attuned to New York. The whole rating system is inapplicable here because the restaurants that succeed in this community by this community's standards are not necessarily the restaurants that would succeed in France by French standards. Daniel isn't trying to be like a Michelin three-star restaurant. It's trying to be like the greatest party in the world, every night. It's a New York thing. I'm sure Daniel Boulud is disappointed by his rating, but he should bear in mind that he never for one second tried to build a Michelin three-star restaurant. He tried to build a great New York restaurant, and he did. There's nothing in Paris like it. It's apples and oranges. None of that, however, makes Jean Georges or Le Bernardin a Michelin three-star restaurant. Though Michelin has now declared that they are three-star restaurants, that label says more about Michelin's marketing strategy than it does about those restaurants. I love both of them, particularly Jean Georges. In the past year, I've been to Jean Georges more than any of the other four-star-type places and I've had wonderful food and wonderful service, and I think the room is delightful. I have great respect for Jean-Georges the chef, and for Johnny the pastry chef. But Jean Georges is not a Michelin three-star restaurant. It comes close in places, but it's at best a near miss. Le Bernardin is even farther from the mark. Now, Per Se and Alain Ducasse at the Essex House may be more reasonable as choices for a three-star rating. But I've got to wonder, if Ducasse's Paris or Monaco restaurant were across the street from the Essex House and Ambroisie were across the street from Per Se, and there were two or three other restaurants in town at that level, would Michelin seriously give three stars to Per Se and Alain Ducasse at the Essex House? I think it's more likely that they would be two-star restaurants and that Jean Georges and Le Bernardin would be one-star restaurants.

It's hard to imagine that the impending chef change is the reason Eleven Madison Park didn't get a star, given that Alain Ducasse at the Essex House just had its own chef change. I think the inspectors just didn't like it. And it's certainly the least star-worthy of the Union Square Hospitality Group restaurants. The omission of Tabla, however, is crazy -- it's the seminal establishment in its category and is superior to comparably positioned restaurants like Vong. Likewise, Union Square Cafe, while not a two- or three-star restaurant, is better and more important than most on the one-star list. The list starts with absurdity at the top and moves on from there. There are only two restaurants in New York City that are even in the ballpark of real Michelin three-star restaurants in Europe: Per Se and Alain Ducasse at the Essex House. But to award three stars to either when both restaurants are either relatively new or have a new chef is not justifiable. Still, those picks make at least some sense. Jean Georges is probably the best of the remaining luxury restaurants, but three Michelin stars? I love Jean Georges and think the food is excellent, but it wouldn't get even two stars in Paris. And Le Bernardin? That's not even in the genre no matter how enjoyable the food. The blatant, patronising lowering of standards to include restaurants that would never survive the review process in Europe puts the lie to the guide's methodology and is indicative of a cynical, pandering marketing effort. The two-star list is the most interesting and defensible, especially in its acknowledgment of David Bouley. And Danube especially has long been underrated by the standard sources. Still, in the context of the one- and three-star lists it doesn't make a lot of sense. The one-star list is indicative of a confused, out-of-touch effort. The Italian choices are particularly amusing.

Now that the guide is here, we've started a new topic: Michelin Guide to New York est arrive . . .

I wonder how this list will achieve any relevance. A person expecting a Michelin three-star experience is going to be pretty surprised by Le Bernardin. And it's not like a single one of the well-informed gourmets here is saying "Wow! Great choices by Michelin! This list is so much better than the New York Times or Zagat!" Rather, it seems like a standard selection of luxury places at the top plus an inexplicably weird mixed bag of one-star places. It all feels like a big "So what?"