Those stars in full

[jayrayner]

Well, here are the headlines

Fat Duck goes up to two stars

Petrus stays on one (why? why?)

London

Foliage gets its one star

Club Gascon gets one

Nahm gets one (why? why?)

The glasshouse gets one

cheznico gets one

Elsewhere

Midsummer House, Cambridge gets one

Longueville Manor, Jersey gets one

The Star Inn, Helmsley gets one

Guellers, Leeds gets one

The Castle, taunton gets one

Walnut tree inn gets one

Amaryllis gets one

That's about it. Almost all the deletions are restaurants that have closed or moved elsewhere. THere are also relocations that carried stars with them (Martin Blunos has his two stars at Blinis, after closing Lettonie for example.)

No new three stars, so I look an arse over the Caines thing.

[Lord Michael Lewis]

Conclusive, although unecessary, proof that Michelin's Great Britain & Ireland Red Guide is still on LW while its continental cousins are tuned into FM.

Congratulations Jay, on the second star! You, Matthew and Heston must be delighted. God knows you've worked hard enough for it

(Edited by Lord Michael Lewis at 7:23 am on Jan. 17, 2002)

[Jon Tseng]

how fascinating

i guess in retrospect club gascon was long overdue. v. pleased for cheznico. hope heston doesn't hike his prices though - can barely afford the carte as it is!

cheers for that jay

j

PS wuz very impressed with the OFM piece last wk - although not sure if Caines can be both a newcomer and a *** contender. i always thought we was pretty much part of the establishment... but yet, maybe less known to londoners

[Mrs Woman]

Hardly "the stars in full"!

What about the news additions of :

Plas Bodegroes in Phwelli

Carlton House in Llanwrytd Wells

Ynyshir Hall in Machynelleth

or are these just too Welsh to mention?

Longeuville Manor already had one, it's Cafe du Moulin that gains its first star.

More new Michelin 1 stars, unmentioned by our journalist friend:

Chavignol at the Old Mill, Shipston-on-Stour

Sol, Shrewsbury

The Olive Branch, Stamford

Rococo, Wells-next-the-Sea

Priory House, yeovil

Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles, Auchterarder

The Commons, Dublin

And there you go. Sorry to be a pedantic old fool but I though you might appreciate a full list!

[Jon Tseng]

that actually sounds like quite a lot of newbies!

anyone got the net change in starred this yr? would be interesting to see if we are seeing more one stars this yr (viz french model where they have about twenty three stars and five billion ones)

j

[jayrayner]

Forgive the ommissions. I wasn't faxed the back end of the alphabet which also included Scotland and Wales  and have only just received it.

As to statistics

***   2 no change

**    13 no change

*      97  +9

Bib gourmand  107  -19

According to the hype sheet there are more *stars than ever before and 11 new pubs on the list

[Jon Tseng]

release on the website

www.michelin.co.uk - click news then red guides

[Matt Grant]

I'm one of the last people to knock the Michelin guide but I'm geting very concerned at the number of 1 star and 'new' one star restaurants and the lack of 2 stars .

Bib gourmands go down and 1 stars (supposedly harder to get) go up.

Seems that it is getting far too easy to get a single star now. Are they dumbing down too much or are that many restaurants really producing food this great?

I'm still at a loss as to why La Tante Claire lost a star when it moved and hasn't managed to get the full set back and as for Petrus, what does Marcus Waring have to do?

[Tony Finch]

I think you're mistaken if you think a restaurant has to produce "great" food in order to get a Michelin star.What is more important is that the food and the restaurant be of a certain type-a particular style of ambience and presentation,pre starters and ,sometimes desserts,certain ingredients(is there a starred restaurant that doesn't have foie gras somewhere on the menu?),a wine list like a book etc.

I'm not saying I don't enjoy restaurants like this myself from time to time,but it is only one definition,and a narrow one at that,of how "great" food can be cooked,served and presented.

As to why this or that place does or doesn't get a star,or another star,I'm not sure that an award system which operates in such a closed and arcane way should be given so much credibility in this more open day and age.

[Jon Tseng]

PS noticed the altnaharrie inn on the list of deletions. anyone know whats happened to it?

PPS matt, i agree the bib gourmand list looks a bit arbitrary (read random)

[Andy Lynes]

The chef has back problems and they have closed for the foreseeable future.

There is an excellent interview with the UK Michelin head honcho in Restaurant this week which clarifies the stated criteria for 1, 2 and 3 stars.

[yvonne johnson]

Is there a full list of starred and deleted somewhere other than the michelin.co.uk site. The Michelin home page seems inaccessible (at least from US). I've searched the Guardian, Times,Telegraph, Independent all to no avail. All I can find are great long articles about Nahm.

I was wondering, too, about Altnaharrie. I thought it was deserveing of a star. Mind, that was in 1999. I read Gunn Eriksen recently put her back out, or something similar.

Gleneagles is the only starred place in the whole of Scotland?

[yvonne johnson]

For people who can't access http://www.michelin.co.uk, there is another Michelin site http://www.ViaMichelin.com where you can find up-dated starred listings.

[stephen wall]

Finch, that theory on stars doesnt really fit in ti places like Chez Bruce or The Glasshouse,does it?

[Tony Finch]

My main problem with Michelin in the UK,and especially London,is that it implicitly pre-supposes a hierarchy of cuisines and not just restaurants within cuisines.In the Michelin mind the very best Chinese or Indian or even Italian  can never be as good as the best French restaurant.A restaurant which presents several dishes to you at once can never be as good as one that serves you 3 courses or more sequentially.A restaurant which lists just a few bottles of well chosen wine will never be reach the highest echelons along with those who feel the need to stock wines from every region in the world(ie France).And so on.

The issue is not whether Michelin restaurants are fine restaurants,but whether a guide that declines to rate or recognize so many other types of fine restaurant can really be said to have any relevance to todays restaurant going public.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Tony - Well the reason that Michelin feel that restaurants featuring different cuisines aren't as good as ones that serve French cuisine is because they are right about it. It hardly pains me to say this but, as much as I like the cuisines you have mentioned, as well as a few you haven't mentioned, there really isn't any cuisine where cooking techniques, strategy for serving the meal, along with the presentation of the meal are as evolved as in French cuisine. And that is before you throw wine and all of it's complexities into the mix. I mean French cuisine is so evolved, the organization of a proper tasting menu calls for a different wine for each dish. And the French have sufficiently different wines froim different regions to virtually have countless pairings. I can't think of another cuisine like that, even cuisines that have contemporaneous wine cultures like Italian or Spain. However, I think where this starts to fall apart is when you start going down  the food chain away from the 3 star restaurants and look at the restaurants they are awarding stars to for lesser application of technique like one stars. It's in this category that they do a poor job of identifying non-French restaurants that deserve a single star. And for me, when places like Nobu and Roussilon get the same rating it exposes this flaw in their system the most.  I mean I would like to be able to point to an Indian, Chinese or North African restaurant worthy of two stars but I don't even know where to begin. And maybe a good part of it is cultural bias, I've been enculturated to think of those cuisines as ethnic cuisines so I don't give them proper consideration. But if you ask me, I really don't think that's the case. I just think the French spent the 20th Century taking various peasant and ethnic dishes and refining them to the point of making them part of "cuisine." So as much as I think Michelin can be a waste, I also think their snootiness when it comes to French cooking seems to have a basis in fact.

[Jon Tseng]

Playing devils advocate slightly, you could argue that Michelin is working to an absolute standard, and its judgements simply recognise the quality on offer. sort of inspired by a quote off the michelin man that they /could/ give three stars to a chinese restaurant, but it would have be bloody good (or words to that effect)

The logic is fairly simple:

i) If we assume Michelin publishes by an absolute criteria, the best french restaurants in the world will get three stars. It follows that the best chinese japanese thai indian &tc would likewise

ii) Generally for the best chinese food you go to hong kong, for the best japanese you go to tokyo etc. Bottom line: the ethnic restaurants in the UK are good, but not the best in the world.

iii) Therefore there probably are three-star standard chinese japanese, indian places in the world. The only thing is they are probably in china, japan or india where Michelin doesn't publish, so they don't get stars.

Any thoughts folks?

J

[Simon Majumdar]

I find the almost instinctive pant wetting that occurs when ever anything french is mention most bizarre.  I have to say that it is almost exclusively American and a result of the sort of restaurants which were the first to offer in "fine dining" in the US. This desperate attempt to eat at three star restaurants, The gastor porn tours of France where coach loads of Hyram's are driven around to places so they can say they have been even if they can't rmeber what they have eaten. etc etc. We have the same to an extent here.  Andy has admitted ( in writing and person ) that he is slightly dismissive of anything that is not French ( in his case as a result of his damascene experience at Pont De La Tour )

To say that French food is "better" than other cuisines is meaningless, as meaningless as saying that Syrian cuisine ( to my mind the most thoughtful and considered of all) is "better" it is just my preference and I don't dismiss French food because they don't offer the same range of preserved fruits that the Syrians do.

The Michelin process is profoundly flawed and corrupt. It takes a way of judging French based restaurant experiences, imposes that on cultures and cuisines which can be every bit as fine but work in different ways ( as Tony says and I know, Persian food is never served in three course, napkins don't exist not does in most cases cutlery )and then uses that to prove that French cuisine is the best.  er, am I really the only one to see the lack of logic in that?

[Tony Finch]

John,how on earth can there be "absolute standards" when it comes to cooking and food.And even if there were,who appointed Michelin inspectors to be the arbiter of it?

"enculturated" and "damascene" within a post of each other eh? I'm beginning to feel a little under-educated for this thread.

[Jon Tseng]

ok, maybe not absolute

but if use a relative standard and say "the best 1%" of restaurants from each cuisine get michelin stars the logic still applies. The best 1% of chinese restaurants are still in hong kong; the best 1% of japs are in Tokyo.

re the "who appointed" question that is neither here nor there. michelin go out, assess restaurants and put their opinion in the public domain. it is up to the individual reader to decide whether i) they believe this is a fair assessment and therefore ii) whether they give it any credence.

oh the old michelin-debate-chestnut on a fri afternoon is /soooo/ amusing....

;-)

[Steve Plotnicki]

Simon - You have twisted my words. I didn't say French cuisine is "better", meaning one can't like Syrian cuisine more than French cuisine, I said that the techniques involved in French cuisine are more developed than other cuisines so the meals offer a level of technical complexity other cuisines do not offer. If you do not believe that is true, you are entitled to your opinion. But it is like telling me that Syrian folk music is better than Beethoven because you do not accept the enculturated point of view as to what is the best music. And I make the distinction not to argue that Beethoven is better in the absolute, but to make the point that that there is a line of thinking that accepts that premise (widely held I might add.) And if you are going to criticize Michelin because that premise is its starting point, you have an unresolvable argument. But if you believe in the hierachy of culinary technique that they start from, it is understandable how a Syrian restaurant couldn't possibly get 3 stars. But, as I pointed out in my last response, I think they are too slow to recognize  modern technique as well as traditional technique that deserve to be evaluated through a different lens. And that is why I personally cannot reconcile the gap between the 3 stars a place like Arpege gets and the 1 star a place like Nobu gets, even though the application of technique is not all that different, all the while acknowledging that  Nobu, even though sublime, is not as sublime or as cerebral an experience as Arpege.  As a result, Michelin end up being too slow to recognize the merits of a cuisines such as Syrian period. Which I might, add is it's main failing as a guide.

[Andy Lynes]

Quote: from Simon Majumdar on 1:37 pm on Jan. 25, 2002

 Andy has admitted ( in writing and person ) that he is slightly dismissive of anything that is not French ( in his case as a result of his damascene experience at Pont De La Tour )

This is absolutely true and I stand by it. Don't quote me but the Michelin head honcho said something in restaurant magazine about the fact that you can only go so far with ethnic cuisines (my termonology) and that French food was simply the most evolved and had limitless potential. The inference was that there just couldn't be a 2 or 3 star Indian restaurant because you can only go so far with Indian cuisine.

[Jon Tseng]

I sort of agree with Steve and Andy. The way I put it is French, Chinese and Japanese are the only three cultures which have systemised they approach to cuisine.

Yes sounds poncy I know; basically they have a system which tells them not only what things are put together but /why/ things are put together. They are based around principles and techniques rather than recipes.

It is these which allow these cuisines to do more and embrace more complicated dishes, techniques, combinations - because they have this conceptual framework which binds it all together.

Examples would be:

i) Escoffier, careme, codification et al

ii) chinese ideas of 'hot' foods and 'cold' foods and their approach to different types of cooking methods, cutting techniques etc (see the Fuschia Dunlop Sichuan book for more examples) or the Japanes

iii) Japanese kaiseiki; also the rigorous approach to sushi preparation

Of course this is all a gross generalisation - french provincial cuisine is as much based around simple recipes as anyone else; english obsession with meat-and-two-veg could be a rudimentary systemisation. However I do not see a comprehensive a system running through the backbone of any other cuisine apart from those mentioned above.

yours pensively

jon

[Steve Plotnicki]

Andy - I would tend to agree. But what flies in the face of that statement is the number of starred establishments they now have in Spain, including the three 3 star restaurants which are bound to grow in number. But I guess that Michelin's view would be that the technique practiced in the El Bulli's of the world is derivitive of French, or Haute Cuisine. I would love to hear his answer to that question.

[Simon Majumdar]

I'm sorry!!?

There is an enculturated view that Beethoven is "better" than Syrian folk music?  That is truly an absurd statement.  There is no such widely held belief apart from amongst the most ill educated of dunderheads ( an no I am not calling you an ill educated dunderhead, not least because you may be bigger than me and we are meeting up soon )

Mmm?  I also wonder claiming cuisines to be "less evolved" is one step away from saying they should all go back to picking cotton massa?

finally, it displays a level of ignorance of cuisines other than french.  Those who claim that the complexities of Syrian ( to use that example again ) or indeed Moghul indian cooking are any less than the finest three star French, patently know nothing about those foods nor indeed accepts that some French food offered in 3* places is often of a rustic "unevolved" simplicity

What Michelin is doing is, as your rightly say Steve, looking at cuisines through a glass darkly.  I would be profoundly wary of any Indian place that has a star ( that is borne out bu Zaika - ugh! ) as they would be debasing their own culture to please their more "evolved" betters.

S