Go Back to France
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The Michelin Guide New York City, which hits New York City bookstores on Friday and will be released at a party tonight at the Guggenheim Museum, is being touted by its publisher with typical French hauteur. “According to Jean-Luc Naret, director of publications for the Michelin Guide, Michelin decided to publish its first North American guide in New York because of the city’s reputation as one of the world’s leading fine-dining and lodging centers, on par with international destinations such as London, Madrid, or Paris,” a press release says.
New Yorkers know that our city isn’t “on par with” those cities – it’s better. The idea that New Yorkers need advice from some fussy Frenchmen to figure out where to eat is just laughable. The Michelin guide testers and their supposedly sophisticated palates come in with the not-so-startling news that the city’s top eight restaurants are Bouley, Daniel, Danube, Masa, Alan Ducasse, Jean-Georges, Le Bernardin, and Per Se. For this conventional wisdom a person should pay $16.95? For this we needed French expertise?
The 2006 Zagat Survey guide to New York City restaurants – a democratic exercise in which restaurants are rated by 30,911 overwhelmingly non-French New Yorkers who drink their wine by gripping the stem of the glass with all fingers, including the pinky – named six of those Michelin eight as among the 50 “most popular” restaurants. All eight of the top Michelin New York restaurants were among the 31 restaurants that scored either a 28 or a 27 – the two top scores – for food in the 2006 Zagat Survey. “NYC is now the preeminent restaurant city in the world,” Tim and Nina Zagat say in the introduction to their guide.
There was none of this “on par with” Jean-Luc-style weaseling for those New Yorkers. We’ve al ways felt that Michelin was a fine manufacturer in those situations where no Goodyear or Bridgestone tires were available. And if we wanted advice on French restaurants in, say, France, we might check their guides, although probably we’d just go over to Chez l’Ami Louis or the Taillevent (though Lyndon Johnson, when asked by DeGaulle where he wanted to eat in Paris responded with the famous riposte “Korean”). Meantime more and more Frenchmen seeking a good meal these days run over to London for some roast beef.
