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Wednesday
Oct032012

A.A. Gill Butchers the Michelin Guide

The 2013 Michelin Guide was published yesterday and revealed to the world those restaurants it deems worthy of one, two, and three stars.  Founded over a century ago by two French brothers, the Michelin Guide has evolved into an entirely seperate beast from what it was originally intended.  In a recent article for Vanity Fair, A. A. Gill shares his opinion and explains, "The Michelin guide made kitchens as competitive as football teams, becoming the most successful and prestigious guidebook in the world, and along the way it killed the very thing it had set out to commend."

No information is known as to how many critics Michelin employs, how much money the critics make, or how frequently they dine at starred restaurants.  What is known is that emotions can reach a roaring boil in anticipation of the published guide.  A bad review is a bad review.  At the end of the day, a Michelin star is praise worthy, but acquire too many and your clientele may start to look like ritzy clones of one another that share self-inflicted dietary restrictions and leather faces that aren't able to hold a smile.

Gill goes on to mention, "Michelin-starred restaurants began to look and taste the same: the service would be cloying and oleaginous, the menus vast and clotted with verbiage. The room would be hushed, the atmosphere religious. The food would be complicated beyond appetite. And it would all be ridiculously expensive."  This statement is hard to argue when you look at the starred restaurants and consider their price points.  "In both London and New York," Gill writes, "the guide appears to be wholly out of touch with the way people actually eat, still being most comfortable rewarding fat, conservative, fussy rooms that use expensive ingredients with ingratiating pomp to serve glossy plutocrats and their speechless rental dates."

Is Gill right?  Is the Michelin Guide right?  Which restaurants are missing from the list?

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