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In the latest Crain's, Bob Lape administers a dose of "Take that, Michelin!" with a four-star review of Daniel. (Note that this link will remain valid only this week, after which the next Crain's review replaces it.)

I was back at the Old Homestead last night. I wandered in without a reservation. At 8:45pm, there was a fifteen minute wait for a table. The place was packed, and diners were still arriving as I left an hour later. On this visit, I had the New York Strip, which was perfectly charred and bright red inside, as I'd asked for. Aside from a tiny bit of gristle on one end of the steak, it was a top-quality cut, prepared as expertly as anywhere in town. The waitstaff look like they've been there forever, and they seem bored. I didn't receive a menu until five minutes after I sat down. I was not offered a wine list. When I asked for wine by the glass, the waiter declaimed as if annoyed, "Merlot, Cabernet, Shiraz, or {inaudible}," as if that were all one needed to know. I chose the Shiraz. On the plus side, at $36 for the strip and $9 for the glass of wine, I got out of the Old Homestead for several dollars less than one would pay for comparable quality at other Manhattan steakhouses. I didn't order any sides, but I noticed that most of them were priced at around $7 or less, which is less than the $9-10 that many steakhouses charge. In a neighborhood where there's a new restaurant every week, the Old Homestead seems to be just as popular as ever.

there are several possibilities either the times has a much more lenient star policy the times has been so inconsistent in recent years that the star system is less meaningful or michelin did not feel that these restaurants were even good in their category ← Historically, it has been much easier to get a New York Times star than a Michelin star. This isn't a new phenomenon. It's true that there are some similarities between the two systems, given that every restaurant that got 2 or 3 stars from Michelin carries 3 or 4 from the Times. But in general, the Michelin system is simply more stingy. The Times rates 52 restaurants a year, and almost all of them get at least one star. Michelin awarded stars to just 39 restaurants in total. The Michelin ratings also reflect a fresh look. Most NYT 3-star restaurants go many years without a re-review. For instance, La Grenouille hasn't had a full review since the Ruth Reichl era. Perhaps that venerable restaurant has lost a step — and if the Michelin inspectors were qualified at anything, surely they were qualified to evaluate an haute French restaurant like La Grenouille. The American Steakhouse is a quintessential New York experience. I think it was appropriate to award a star to the restaurant that, many believe, best exemplifies the style. Of course, I know there are some who say that Luger is overrated, alongside those who say that it's still as good as it was.

I thought I'd leverage this thread, rather than starting a new one. In today's New York Post, Steve Cuozzo reports mixed success for the Time-Warner food court. Among the highlights: Per Se, of course, is full every evening, but it's only sixteen tables. "Tiny Masa, with a handful of seats, hardly draws throngs," and you can't get out of there without spending $350 a head (before beverages). There's nowhere for tourists and patrons at the mall's mid-market stores to grab a quick bite. Café Gray is a big hit at dinner (it's grossing $1 million a month), but traffic has been slow at lunch. The restaurant is adding sandwiches and salads to its menu next week. According to Ken Himmel, who runs the food court, this will allow patrons "to get in and out faster to broaden the lunch audience." In an adjoining article the Post's Braden Keil reports that Gray Kunz has signed a contract to open a new restaurant in the former Aquavit space. No word yet what type of restaurant it will be. Back at the mall, Cuozzo says that V Steakhouse is "sparsely populated" and is almost certain to close next year. Himmel will only say that he can't comment "until after the first of the year," which doesn't sound optimistic. (On the other hand, to have three out of four restaurants successful—and Michelin starred—sure ain't bad.) Himmel concedes the space needs work. "I want to bring a different and new audience into the building, willing to spend $50 a person on dinner, but not $100." Plans to add a more informal café in a the space adjoining Café Gray have been abandoned, as has the Charlie Trotter restaurant. Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery has been much delayed, but is still expected to open next year.

No, I don't work for Zagat. However, you said something that I believe is manifestly unjust: You gave two examples of supposedly good restaurants Zagat had missed. It turns out Bandol Bistro is sufficiently obscure that about half the media in town had missed it. Are they all on the take? I think not. The second (DeMarchelier) is another of those middle-of-the-road places covered by some, not others. In April 1998, Ruch Reichl of the Times said of DeMarchelier, "Looks like a bistro, but the food is disappointing and the prices are high." That's just one data point, but still, it's not exactly supportive of your premise. Zagat has a fair number of flaws, as do all data sources, but Zagat's ratings tend to correlate with other media that rate restaurants. You find some oddities here & there. But then, Frank Bruni uncorks some strange ratings too (both too high and too low), and no one has suggested he's corrupt. Sure, that's why they list Starbucks...(!!??) ← Remember, Zagat ratings are based on reader votes. Starbucks is in the 2006 guide with a rather low (by Zagat standards) 12/10/13 rating, because people submitted ballots for it.

One would hardly need Zagat for the top 30; it would only have 4 pages if that was all it listed. It's the restaurants in the middle, the bistros, the family restos that the public needs to be made aware of. However, this particular writer said that when he's visiting a new place, he checks the Zagat top-30 to identify the top restaurants worth trying, and as far as I can tell that works just fine. He didn't say he's looking for "the restaurants in the middle." Zagat in New York lists around 2,500 restaurants, which is perhaps 10-15% of the total. Even with the most conscientious effort, some gems are going to be omitted. I did some spot checking. I can't find a restaurant called "DuMarchelier" in any online guide. Bandol is a mixed bag. It's on Citysearch and AOL Digital City. The New York Times lists it, but unrated. Neither New York Magazine nor Gayot.com list it. Newsday lists it, but The Village Voice does not. In short, Bandol is one of those mid-market places that about half the media has noticed, and about half has not. I'm sure there are hundreds of those, and it doesn't make all of the media corrupt. Any work of compilation must draw the line somewhere.

However, you don't know that for any travel or restaurant guide that has a corporate publisher. And at other media outlets where you do know the reviewer's name (Frank Bruni at the New York Times), you still really don't know much of anything about the process or standards that led to the review. I don't so much care what the process was, when I can read the book and draw my own conclusions. Nathan made a rather pertinent point, which no one so far has disputed: I do agree with Fat Guy that not all screw-ups have the same weight. Theoretically, you could have just a handful of errors, or perhaps just one huge error that invalidates the whole exercise. I haven't yet seen that (much as I cringe at some of the mistakes), but I realize some people do. What's interesting is that those who say the guide is nearly worthless can't agree precisely which mistake(s) put it over the edge. For Rich, it's the lack of a star for Tasting Room, but to Fat Guy that decision is "within the margin of error." (I concur with FG on that one.) Another way of putting it is to ask what other guide having an equivalent purpose (a pocket-sized book for out-of-town travelers who want to dine well) has done a better job? Zagat is the comparison everyone is making, for obvious reasons. While I have no doubt that Zagat will remain king of the local market, no one yet has claimed that Zagat is better; only that it has its own set of peculiar flaws.

In reading through the book, I've found some proofreading errors, but none as extreme as those Steve Cuozzo reported in the Post. If you're not familiar with the area, Gracie Mansion (the Mayor's mansion) does not offer public tours. (What obviously happened here was that much of the text was assembled by non-residents who munged a lot of the data from public websites.) Cuozzo visits the starred Etats-Unis and finds "terrific meatloaf," but also "weird 'lobster lasagna,'" such as "you find in second-class food towns like Miami."

Although I think Katz's should have been there, one omission out of 507 doesn't quite get me to total cluelessness. No contributor to this thread has listed more than a dozen or so restaurants that s/he felt very strongly are serious omissions; most have listed a lot less than that. In a guide of this size, it falls within the reasonable judgment that editors are supposed to exercise. Maybe the inspector(s) visited Katz's, had an experience like Trish's, and concluded the place is running on reputation, or is a one-ingredient restaurant (Pastrami). Egregious as that error was, it has happened once in the company's 100+ year history (and not in New York).

This is a huge mistake, IMHO. Not only is the credibility of Zagat in great question, but many many good restaurants are not listed at all, probably a quid pro quo for some editorial grudge, or the like... ← I'd be curious if you could back this comment up. For instance, name a restaurant in New York that has a credible claim to be in the top 30, that's not in Zagat at all. In my mind, a credible claim would be a restaurant that has earned comparable recognition in other media sources that review restaurants—NYT, New York, Michelin, Gayot, or even eGullet—that Zagat missed. If they all missed it, then you've probably got heavy lifting to persuade me that it has any case to be in the top 30. Frankly, I've almost never searched for a restaurant in Zagat and not found it. Where that happened, it was an obscure restaurant that the entire "food community" had overlooked, not just Zagat. If anything, the rap on Zagat is their method sometimes assigns lofty ratings to very ordinary places. I've not seen the situation where a truly excellent restaurant was completely left out of the guide.

I don't consider it a failure if a restaurant accurately describes itself, and by so doing, dissuades customers who wouldn't have been happy dining there. Actually, a website that filters out unproductive customers might be viewed as a success. What self-respecting chef wants to attract customers who will be unhappy? OTOH, if a website isn't user-friendly, or the visitor can't easily find the information s/he's looking for, than that's a failure.

Does an entry in the telephone directory improve business? I would say yes. On the whole, you're better off if people can find you. These days, customers are more likely to be googling you than opening a telephone book. It's probably better if the first thing they see on google is your site (something you control), rather than an entry on someone else's site (which you cannot control, and which might be inaccurate, out-of-date, or unfavorable). I think it's a no-brainer for any fine-dining establishment to have some sort of web presence. A more useful question is whether Daniel's glitzy site is worth the money he spent on it, or if a plain-jane site like Le Bernardin's or Bouley's is just as good. Indeed, the plain-jane site might be better, since it loads faster. I have sometimes gone to a restaurant because I could easily find the information I was looking for. I have sometimes not gone because information wasn't readily available. You can't taste or smell an eGullet post either, but it's one of the sources many of us depend upon to identify restaurants to try. But the restaurant can't control what appears on eGullet. They can control their own website. At most restaurants, if the menu is not the same as on the website, it is certainly very close.

A brief survey of websites at the "ultra-luxe" level suggests that Jean-Georges Vongerichten needs a new head of technology. (JG, if you're reading, I know some people who'll work for food.) Alain Ducasse has a slick modern website. The splash page allows you to choose French or English. You then get to links for each of Ducasse's three 3-star restaurants. The page for ADNY has current menus as of Autumn 2005, including the wine list. Daniel Boulud has two NYC web addresses: http://danielboulud.com/ and http://www.danielnyc.com/. Either one takes you to the same hi-tech page, with a photo of the great man himself and links to all of his restaurants. This is the most attractive of the high-end restaurant websites. Behind all of its glitz, the most important information is all there, including gorgeous photos and current menus. Le Bernardin's website is a bit dowdy by modern standards, but it loads quickly, and current menus are posted. There is a convenient link to Le Bernardin's OpenTable page. Like that of Le Bernardin, Bouley's website is a bit low-tech by modern standards, but it tells everything you need to know, including current menus. There is a link to Bouley's other high-end restaurant, Danube, whose website is similarly structured. Thomas Keller probably didn't think he needed a web presence till he came to New York. His website (http://www.perseny.com/) is named for his New York restaurant, but it's actually the "splash page" for all four of his restaurants in California, Las Vegas, and New York. No actual menu is shown for Per Se, but the site says: "There are three menus offered that change on a daily basis: A five course menu with selections, a nine course tasting of Vegetables and the nine course Chef's Tasting Menu. All menus are $210. Each is written daily and showcases the finest available products of the season." The site is evidently a work in progress, as when you click on "Wine Program" you get a page that says "Text to come." It has been this way for a while. You get the impression that Per Se's website is seldom touched. Lastly, we get to Jean-Georges Vongerichten's empire, which is based at http://www.jean-georges.com/. The site has a glitzy Flash intro and is long on pictures of the eponymous chef. It is short on information about the restaurants themselves. There are links for each of JGV's fifteen restaurant properties. Click on any one of them, and what's there is a brief one-paragraph description of the property—mostly about its décor. The heading is "Location/Hours," but strangely, neither the location nor the hours is disclosed. The link for "Perry Street" still says "Coming Soon." There are no menus or prices. JGV is also the only one of those surveyed who doesn't have his restaurants on OpenTable (aside from Vong). One can understand Thomas Keller's lagging web development: Per Se keeps raising its prices, and even then he is sold out every night. But JGV isn't selling every seat at every restaurant. Perhaps it would help if his website disclosed what his restaurants are serving, what it costs to dine there, or even where these places are located.

I'll echo endorsements for the Osso Buco Tortellini, and also the Potato Gnocchi with Braised Rabbit, both of which I tried on Thursday night. The restaurant was not at all crowded at 6:00pm, and it was a fine venue for a quiet business dinner.

I seem to keep returning to Compass, as it's one of the better mid-priced fine dining options near Lincoln Center. Last night, I returned with a new friend, and again I was not disappointed. We both had the $32 prix fixe, which for its quality is one of the better deals at this price point. I started with a salmon tartare, followed by braised shortribs that melted in your mouth. Dessert was a yogurt panna cotta. My friend and I dined at Blue Hill the night before. Now, if you asked a dozen knowledgeable people, most would say that Blue Hill is the more reliable, but my friend and I had no trouble concluding—at least on this occasion—that we had enjoyed our dinner at Compass more. With its checkered history of four chefs in four years, it would have been easy for Compass to wither and die. It has a large dining room to fill, but we found it busy last night. It's a pity Amanda Hesser demoted it to one star, back when Katy Sparks was at the stoves (which seems like ages ago). Compass is back.

A friend and I dined at Blue Hill on Saturday night. I had the Foie Gras and the Stone Barns Pastured Chicken. The foie was competently executed (if nothing special). You expect ultra-tender chicken from Blue Hill—and you get it—but the dish was spoiled by an overpowering tomato sauce. My friend had the mushroom salad and the lamb. Oddly enough, she too felt that her entrée was spoiled by a sauce that had too much tomato in it. On the plus side, my friend (who'd never been to BH) found the ambiance enchanting. When she left a third of her mushroom salad uneaten, the kitchen sent someone out to inquire if anything was wrong. (There wasn't; it was just a large portion, and she was saving room for the main course.) It's rare anyone will even bother to ask, and we were impressed that they noticed. IMO, there's a hole in Blue Hill's wine list, with not enough choices in around the $40 range. I'm not saying there aren't any, but they are few and far between. I asked the sommelier for a wine in that range that would go with the chicken and the lamb. She quickly produced a wonderful new arrival (not on the menu) at $38. Blue Hill remains a friendly place to which I'll return, but on this occasion both entrées slightly misfired.

← I have a lot of respect for Ya-Roo's posts, but any restaurant can have an off night. Read the Per Se thread, and you find the occasional report from someone who had a bad experience there. Obviously if we see a few more like it, we'll have to start wondering if Jewel Bako has lost its touch. I suspect that every restaurant that received an unexpected Michelin star has a very, very happy owner, and I put Jewel Bako in that category.

Amidst all this discussion of the stars, no one has talked about the book itself. I bought a copy last night. It's 480 pages, but printed on rather thin paper, so the book still appears to be pocket-sized — only a little thicker than Zagat. Inside the front cover is a fold-out map of the city, emphasizing neighborhoods and cross-referencing the section of the book where each is covered. Inside the rear cover is a fold-out subway map. Both fold-outs include a quick key to the guide's many symbols. Those flaps could also be used as book marks. At the beginning, there is a brief history of New York City (2 pgs), an alphabetical list of restaurants (7 pgs), a list of restaurants by cuisine (8 pgs), a list of starred restaurants and a more detailed explanation of the stars (2 pgs), Where to Eat for Less Than $25 (1 pg, 58 restaurants), Where to Have Brunch (3 pgs), and Where to Have a Late Dinner (post-11:30pm) (3 pgs). The restaurants are organized by neighborhood, and the neighborhods are listed in alphabetical order. For each neighborhood, there's a two-page spread providing history, geography, highlights of the area, and a map. Each starred restaurant in the neighborhood gets a two-page spread, with a photo of the dining room, a description, and a recipe from that restaurant. All other restaurants get 1/2 page, with the usual "phone directory" information (including e-mail and websites) and a one-paragraph write-up. The hotels are at the back of the book, in alphabetical order without regard to neighborhood. The neighborhood maps have little numbers in red circles, indicating where restaurants are located. It is most peculiar that the restaurant write-ups don't indicate the number on the map to which they correspond. This must surely be an error; I've never seen a map with circled numbers, where there wasn't a listing of what the numbers stood for. Edit: I finally found the cross-reference to the numbers in the left margin of the restaurant pages, but it was awfully easy to miss. No one knows for sure how many restaurants are in this fair city. The Guide itself says there are 17,300 of them. Eater thinks it's 23,000. Anyhow, it's tens of thousands. Any guide of reasonable size must necessarily exclude some gems. Eater offers a pretty good list of restaurants that didn't make the cut. Eater's case perhaps carries more force where a restaurant is historically important (Cafe des Artistes, Katz's Deli, Tavern on the Green), a particularly well known favorite (Florent, Norma's), or offers an under-represented cuisine (Dinosaur BBQ, Blue Smoke). I cannot regret the exclusion of unexceptional restaurants already well represented by other choices in the same category (F.Illi Ponte, Duane Park Cafe), or restaurants too new to judge (Bette, Perry St). I saw one restaurant in the guide that has already closed: Pace. I wondered how the guide would describe restaurants that contended for a star, but didn't get one. Alas, there is no clue. Michelin writes as if all of the 507 restaurants listed are already winners, and there is no need to disparage any of them. There is none of Zagat's famous "Yes, but..." style. The write-ups emphasize the restaurants' assets, not their liabilities. However, there is enough information for a visitor to discern what type of restaurant they are reading about. For instance, of Great N.Y. Noodletown, the guide writes, "If you're looking for fancy décor, keep on walking....[it's] a casual place to say the least." The write-ups are informal, at times breezy, and emphasize décor as much as food. There's been a lot of talk about stars, but the other dimension on the Michelin axis is the couvert (French for "cover"), which refers to the level of comfort, or luxury. Each restaurant is assigned between one and five of these. Every restaurant with five couverts received at least two stars. Most restaurants with four couverts have at least one star, but there are exceptions: Fives, The Four Seasons, La Grenouille. If the couverts are red, it signifies an especially pleasant restaurant. Those with red couverts that are not starred (# of couverts in parentheses): Asiate (3), Bayard's (3), Blue Water Grill (2), Central Park Boathouse (2), The Grocery (1), Il Buco (1), Jack's Luxury Oyster Bar (1), Keens Steakhouse (3), Kittichai (2), Lure Fishbar (3), Ono (3), Pampano (2), River Café (3), Spice Market (2), Vatan (1), and V Steakhouse (3). By the way, there are no Bib Gourmands. A restaurant with an exceptional wine list receives a little symbol that looks like a clump of grapes. I suspect many users of the Michelin Guide are oenophiles, so I find it disappointing that there is no index of these at the front of the book. For the record, these are the restaurants so designated: ADNY, Alto, Aroma Kitchen & Wine Bar, Artisanal, Aureole, Babbo, Bayard's, Bistro du Vent, BLT Fish, BLT Steak, Bottega del Vino, Bouley, Café Boulud, Capital Grille, 'Cesca, Compass, Craft, Craftbar, Cru, Daniel, Danube, Della Rovere, Felidia, Fiamma Osteria, Fleur de Sel, Gramercy Tavern, Jean Georges, L'Absinthe, La Gouloe, La Masseria, Landmarc, Le Bernardin, Mark's, The Modern, Montrachet, Oceana, Ouest, Otto, Picholine, Roberto's, Rothmann's, Smith & Wollensky, Sparks Steakhouse, Tasting Room, Tocqueville, Veritas. Roberto's in the Bronx is the only restaurant outside of Manhattan that Michelin praised for its wine list. Complaints? I have a few. The alphabetical list of restaurants includes the number of stars and couverts, but the list by cuisine does not. If we take the guide on its own terms, I suspect the stars/couverts would be at least as helpful, if not more so, on the index by cuisine. It would offer a quick guide to the level of luxury and the quality of the food among restaurants offering a similar menu. Similarly, the indexes would easily have room for the price level, which Michelin signifies by two small coins (under $25), or $$ to $$$$. There are many restaurants that are hard to classify. Even accepting that, Michelin's assignment of a "cuisine" to each restaurant is often unhelpful. These are the categories the guide uses: American, Asian, Austrian, Belgian, Brazilian, Chinese, Contemporary, Contemporary Asian, Contemporary French, Contemporary Japanese, Contemporary Mexican, Contemporary Thai, Cuban, Deli, Egyptian, European, French, Fusion, Gastro-Pub, Greek, Hawaiin, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin American, Malaysian, Mediterranean, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Moroccan, Persian, Russian, Scandinavian, Seafood, Southern, Southwestern, Spanish, Steakhouse, Thai, Turkish, Vegetarian, Venezuelan, Vietnamese. I have a number of complains about this list. First of all, the word 'Contemporary' should come after the primary cuisine, so that the 'Japanese' and 'Japanese (Contemporary)' would be next to each other in the index, instead of several pages apart. The distinction between ___ and Contempoarary ___ is often arbitrary. For instance, Nobu is Contemporary Japanese, but EN Japanese Brasserie is just plain Japanese. Spice Market is Asian, but Asiate is Contemporary Asian (the only one in its category). Kittichai is Thai, but the starred Vong is Contemporary Thai (the only one it its category). The plain-old 'Contemporary' category is an 80-restaurant hodge-podge. It includes, of all things, Alain Ducasse, which is surely regarded by just about everyone else as a French restaurant. It also includes Alto (Italian to everyone else) and Tabla (Indian to everyone else). I can see the 'Contemporary' label for places like Five Ninth and WD-50, but not for Jean Georges and Daniel. The guide has a European category with just two restaurants (August, Schiller's Liquor Bar); why not put Café Gray there? Surely Dylan Prime is a Steakhouse. Another strange category is 'Fusion', containing just four restaurants: Asia de Cuba, Chubo, Public, and Stanton Social. Anyone familiar with these restaurants, and the others in the guide, will immediately see how strange a grouping this is. Those who think the guide is too Gallic should think again. There's a staggering 116 Italian restaurants, or almost 23% of the listings. By contrast, only 49 restaurants are classified as French or Contemporary French (although some of those in the 'Contemporary' category are surely mis-classified). Interestingly, Daniel and DB Bistro Moderne are listed as just plain Contemporary, but Café Boulud as Contemporary French. Although only two Japanese restaurants were starred, Japanese cuisine is well represented with 49 restaurants listed in either the plain or the Contemporary variety. Are any cuisines under-represented? Arguably Chinese is, with only 18 restaurants (12 of them in Chinatown proper). There are just two delis, with the famous Katz's omitted. There are five Korean, six Vietnamese, nine Thai or Contemporary Thai. The most significant omitted cuisine is barbecue. While some may question whether you can get truly authentic BBQ in New York, the growth of the category in the last few years certainly merits a mention in the guide. A count of the number of pages per neighborhood gives an idea of the guide's geographical biases: Chelsea (10 pgs), East Village (16), Financial District (6), Gramercy/Flatiron/Union Square (28), Greenwich/West Village (40), Harlem (4), Little Italy (6), Lower East Side (10), Meatpacking District (8), Midtown East (46), Midtown West (48), SoHo/NoLiTa (18), TriBeCa (22), Upper East Side (40), Upper West Side (16), Washington Heights (4), Bronx (4), Brooklyn (20), Queens (10), Staten Island (4). I don't really have any argument with this. By this time next year, I'd strongly advise the writers to figure out that Alain Ducasse is French, and Tabla is Indian. The strange categorization of the cuisines is the book's most serious weakness. But aside from that, I think it is a very reasonable restaurant guide for the visiting tourist who wishes to dine well, which is the audience I believe it was written for.

What one asks from such a guide are reasonable choices, not necessarily the precise set of choices I would personally have made. Is Tasting Room's non-starred status reasonable? Tasting Room is in Zagat's top 50, but not in the top 32. (You can't get more precise than that, since there are ties.) Tasting Room is not in Gayot's top 50; there, it has a food rating of 14, five notches below the highest food rating they've assigned in New York, which is 19. The New York Times rated Tasting Room one star, which means merely "good." (It is certainly arguable that William Grimes didn't 'get' Tasting Room, but there are 44 three or four-star restaurants per the Times. Even had Grimes allotted two stars to Tasting Room, it wouldn't be in the top 40.) These data points, coming from three different media sources, demonstrate that Tasting Room is arguably on the cusp of the top-40, but not so clearly worthy that a reasonable guide must rate it that highly. There are other restaurants that have a much more solid case. Take Chanterelle. It has three stars from the Times, and had four not so long ago. It is in Gayot's top 10, and it's the only restaurant on that list that didn't get at least one Michelin star. It has the second-highest Zagat food rating (a point higher than Tasting Room). I believe it also won the James Beard "Best Restaurant in America" award just a year ago. Based on ratings from other sources that rate restaurants, you'd have to say Chanterelle has a lot more cause for complaint than Tasting Room.

Funny you should say that. Michelin provides at least as much (if not more) explanation of their stars as any media outlet that rates restaurants. There are three newspapers in NYC alone that assign stars. And then there are the Zagat ratings, whose methodological woes are well chronicled, but are nevertheless highly successful, and more influential in New York than Michelin is ever likely to be. As Andy Lynes noted, there's actually a whole lot of information out there about how Michelin works, if one bothers to seek it out. Their criteria are certainly a whole lot clearer than Frank Bruni's. Justice Potter Stewart famously said of pornography that it's not precisely definable, but "I know it when I see it." Much the same is true of a three-star restaurant. Sizzleteeth is adept at changing the subject when cornered, but we'll try again. Of the eight restaurants to which Michelin gave two or three stars, seven have now, or have had in the recent past, four stars from the New York Times. All eight of them have either the highest (28) or second-highest (27) food rating on Zagat. The top 10 NYC food ratings list on Gayot.com includes seven of those eight restaurants (all but Danube). The strong correlation of these lists strongly suggests that restaurant ratings are not arbitrary. If they were, you would not expect to find such a high degree of correlation. At the same time, because these judgments are subjective, the various lists are not identical, which is probably why Michelin made the commercial decision that there was room in the market for yet another NYC restaurant rating guide. It also gives us plenty to argue about. Michelin is a commercial venture, just like the New York Times and Zagat. They'll continue to rate restaurants as long as it is worth their while. As I mentioned upthread, to rate is human, so it's unsurprising that many guides that list restaurants attempt to rate them somehow. The Michelin system has been in existence (and successfully so) longer than anybody's, it is the least likely to change.

A full year for an entire city is a relatively short amount of time and at 240 meals a year times X number of inspectors divided by Y Number of restaurants - how many meals do those inspectors eat at the same place and how often? (edit: and is that 240 meals a year total? not just for NY but for the world?) My understanding is that the inspectors are based in New York; it's not a team that works mostly in Paris and flies in for a dinner or two. They've reviewed 507 restaurants in one year, visiting each of them at least once, and some up to twelve times. The awarding of stars was a consensus decision, and not based on the word of any one inspector. Do you know anyone else who's done that? In general teachers provide a guideline - a set of known criteria that your project must fall within at each level to obtain each level of grade. I don't know your experience, but as I recall there usually aren't crisp criteria in 'soft subjects'. The professor might say, "Your grade depends on the clarity and organization of the ideas, the depth of the analysis, the originality of the thesis, and how well it is supported." It's a bit like saying that the rating of a restaurant is based on the quality of the ingredients, the skill of preparation, the attentiveness of the service, and the surrounding ambiance. I consider a great many of the members here to be experienced and knowledgable people - and man do they differ. They differ at the margins. It's like the weekly College Football poll, which is followed by far more people than this list of restaurants, and is the source of many more arguments. But if you ask a dozen knowledgeable people who avidly follow the sport to name their top 10, there'll be considerably more agreement than not. Naturally, if you give them the chance, they'll argue all day about the relatively small differences between them. That's what's happening here. Having never dined at either I cannot accurately answer that question even based on my own perceptions....but taking into account the vast number of opinions by the many many experienced and knowledgable people on this forum - I would venture to guess that Per Se may be quite the experience. ← I'm inferring from the comment that you agree it is possible to recognize that Restaurant A is more luxurious than Restaurant B, even if it's not an exact science.

Au contraire, they worked on it over a full year. It is well documented that the typical Michelin inspector eats about 240 fine dining meals a year, and prepares a detailed report on each. How many of us can say the same? The logical conclusion would be that opinions on any "soft subject" are never worth paying for. It would also imply that eGullet (even though most of us don't pay for it, although somebody does) is equally worthless. By the way, did you ever take a 'soft' subject in school? (English, History, Philosophy, Political Science.) Somehow a teacher grades each assignment, as well as the entire term. Your grade, A through F, is subjective. But it counts. Trained and experienced teachers generally won't differ all that much on grades. If one teacher gave your English paper an A, it's doubful that another would have given it D. On the other hand, it's quite possible that another would have given it a B, because some uncertainty is inherent in a soft subject. In fact, experienced people won't differ all that much. Let's take the eight restaurants that Michelin annointed with 2 or 3 stars. As a whole, I haven't heard anyone say that it's a ridiculous list. At most, there's some grumbling that one or two of the 3-stars should have been 2 stars. That's like the English paper that could receive an A from one professor, and B from another. Nobody here has said that there's a rational candidate for 3 stars that Michelin overlooked. Nobody has said that any of the 3-star places should have been one or zero. The argument is merely at the margins, which one must accept as natural in a 'soft' subject. (Occasional mistakes are inherent in hard subjects, too; it's what they call "experimental error.") Among the one-star places, since there are 31 of them, you have to allow a certain number of Mulligans. If you ask anybody whatsoever to name 31 restaurants according to any criteria you choose, there will be some choices that others find inexplicable. But then, if you launch an eGullet or Chowhound thread asking for recommendations, you will get a wide variety of advice, much of it quite good, and some of it ridiculous; indeed, you'll get the latter in far greater abundance, since no qualifications are required to post on a website. Are you suggesting you cannot perceive that Per Se is more luxurious than The Spotted Pig?

The NY Times covers reactions here:

Very funny you should say that. No sport has more ways of breaking down and classifying things than baseball. Baseball, of course, breaks down its classifications to numbers. So does Michelin (so-many stars, so-many knives and forks). Baseball gives out highly subjective awards (MVP, Cy Young, player of the month, rookie of the year, selection to the All-Star Team); so does Michelin. ...and... Those two comments suggest that you, too, are classifying restaurants. Otherwise, on what basis could they be right or wrong?

To classify is human. We will no sooner stop classifying things than we will stop eating. If you don't think Michelin's classifications are sound, then whose are? If you think that everybody's are wrong, that's fair enough, but rather irrelevant. Human beings are going to classify. It's what we do.