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February 23, 2005
Guide Rouge 2005 for France
Michelin’s guide for France 2005 is out. Well not really, but the press release was hastily released today, prompted by the pre-mature sale of guides on Corsica. Download press release here
The press release is erroneous since the new restaurants in each class, except for the new 3-star, are supposed to be marked by N to the left of the restaurant’s name, but the N is to be found to the left of the restaurant on the row below the restaurant promoted this year. Confusing? Well maybe, but not as confusing as the new intermediate classes created by Michelin solely for the French guide this year.
The big movements this year includes the demotion of Lameloise and le Jardin des Sens to 2-stars and promotion of Regis Marcon to 3-stars. It was no surprise that le Jardin des Sens lost a star. The demotion of Lameloise on the other hand has evoked sadness in the culinary world. Nobody felt Lameloise was any of the top performing 3-stars, but if Lameloise was on the demotion list, there should be at least another 10 on that list.
Let us go back to the new intermediary classes created for this year or “espoirs” as Michelin calls them. There are 18 none-star espoirs to gain one star, 10 one-star espoirs to gain 2-stars and 5 2-stars espoirs to gain 3-stars. Michelin writes in the foreword of the press release that the espoirs represent the best restaurants in their respective class. At a quick glance, this could be perceived as a good thing for those who over the years have desired better ratings within each class. But Michelin actually reveals many potential flaws in their rating system and their promotion and demotion standards by the creation or rather by the disclosure of the espoirs. At the same time as Michelin listed the mentioned espoirs, they demoted 2 restaurants from 3-stars to 2-stars, 4 restaurants from 2 stars to 1-star and 37 restaurants to no star. None of the demoted restaurants are listed as espoirs, which consequently means that Michelin do not perceive any of them to be as good as the best in the class below the class in which they were rated in last year. This is hardly a coincidence. Instead it reveals that Michelin’s standards for demoting are not the same as the standards for promoting a restaurant. This has been denied by Michelin before as well as whether there were certain three stars that were better than others. But there is no other conclusion that can be drawn. So what? Well the questions that arises regarding Michelin’s rating standards and more importantly their reliability are not trivial. Indeed, Michelin seems now to acknowledge that a restaurant in order to be demoted must have fallen not just below the class it is currently rated in, but also below the best of the class below that in which it is rated. This ultimately means that it is highly likely that a number of restaurants in each class actually fall well below Michelins standards for a rating in that class but Michelin choose not to demote them. So how many are they? Michelin are not likely going to give the answer on how many in each class are “sans espoirs” but surely the readers will want to know.
With this type of questionable rating system one can surely wonder if there are political reasons why certain restaurants are not demoted or promoted for that matter. The creation of espoirs classes is all but well considered and one can only speculate that Michelin has designed the espoirs classes for marketing reasons for the release of the New York guide later this year
Despite punctures in Michelin’s reputation over the last years, which this adds to, it still remains one of the more reliable guides or at least a good collection of maps, phone numbers, opening hours, and prices for the most interesting restaurants in France.
/MJ
