Pave: Dining Decline Redux

France again (and here and here and here) loses a little wattage in her rayonnement.

東京 いちばん!
Another Plus: Japanese Wait Staffs Bathe

FORGET PARIS - NOW TOKYO IS THE HOME OF HAUTE CUISINE
TOKYO November 20, 2007 (NYS/Telegraph)

MICHELIN CROWNS JAPAN WORLD'S CULINARY CAPITAL

November 20, 2007 (SMH/AP) - It's official. Tokyo has unseated Paris as the world's culinary capital.

That's according to Michelin Guides, the French bible of gastronomy, which announced a Tokyo edition today - its first outside Europe and the United States.

Michelin's Tokyo guide awarded 191 stars to 150 restaurants in the Japanese capital, the most number of stars awarded in any city. Previously, Paris had the most stars, at 65.

TOKYO 'TOP CITY FOR GOOD EATING'

November 20, 2007 (BBC) - The home of haute cuisine just got taken down a peg with an authoritative judgement that Paris is not the world's top city for good eating. That distinction now goes to Tokyo, according to the bible for foodies everywhere, the Michelin guide.

... Eight of Tokyo's restaurants won the maximum three stars* - only two fewer than Paris itself. Another 25 got two stars and 117 one star. To add to Paris's embarrassment, three of the top eight restaurants in Tokyo serve French food.

The good news for Paris is that the French guides have been so discredited of late that it hardly matters how Michelin ranks Paris.

IT'S AMATEUR HOUR CHEZ MICHELIN
The First Los Angeles Red Guide Is Out. The Verdict?
What A Clueless Way To Take Over The World.

LOS ANGELES November 21, 2007 (LAT) - The famous red guides for restaurants in Europe published by the French tire company may have lost their luster in recent years, even as the company embarked on a plan to expand to cover the world, but nothing could have prepared this food-loving Angelena for what's in the pages of the just-published Michelin Guide Los Angeles 2008. In short, it's amateurish, confusing and barely credible.

... Trouble for the red guide started back in 2004, when a former inspector [Pascal Rémy] wrote an exposé [L'inspecteur se met à table] claiming that a third of France's three-star restaurants could never lose a star because they're "untouchable." The next year, the Benelux Michelin edition featured a restaurant that hadn't yet opened. And later in 2005, Alain Senderens, whose Lucas Carton restaurant in Paris had three stars for 28 years, became the third French chef** to "renounce" his stars.

Michelin-watchers posited that the company's first U.S. guidebook -- Michelin Guide New York City 2006 -- might rescue its reputation, but it turned out to be filled with mistakes and was skewered by New York magazine and others.

And so it is with the LA guide. Leslie Brenner, the above author, goes on to list errors of omission and errors of commission, flagrant bias, and some of the blandest food writing imaginable. As regards the latter, Jean-Luc Naret, director of Michelin guides, blandly explains:

We are in the business of rating. We're just getting into the business of writing.

Poor ratings. Poorer writing. [Pause.] Yes, well, good luck staying in either business.

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* The eight are: Restaurant de Joël Robuchon (French), Hamadaya (Japanese), Kanda (Japanese), Koju (Japanese), L'Osier (French), Quintessence (French contemporary), Sukiyabashi Jiro (sushi) and Sushi Mizutani (sushi).

** Joël Robuchon was another, though he has since accepted star ratings for restaurants in Las Vegas and Tokyo. Pave was unable to suss out the third chef.

PFFT (What is this?): Less than the best 2½ | Rayonnement français ½ (Michelin) / 2½ (Chef Robuchon's three stars each in Tokyo and Las Vegas)