Gastronomique: Thomas Keller Kicks Alice Waters's Michelin Ass!*
The new Michelin was stingy with stars for San Francisco: no 3 stars restaurants (the only one in the wider bay area being the French Laundry in Napa), two 2 stars (Aqua and Michael Mina), and a 12 one stars (Fleur de Lys, La Folie, the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, Rubicon, Bushi-Tei, Quince, Range, Acquerello, Masa's, Gary Danko, Boulevard, Fifth Floor). Alice Waters got only one tiny puny star for her Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Spanked!
Every food critic is shocked, shocked!, to discover that a bunch of out-of-town restaurant reviewers disagree with their own taste. The Chron's Michael Bauer does not understand why the Michelin did not reprint his top 100 list in extenso, and goes looking for clues. He finds typos here and there, which means the whole book just cannot be trusted.
SF Weekly reviewer Robert Lauriston, wearing his chowhound hat, is convinced that it is a French conspiracy: even the Italian restaurants on the list are really French. The Michelin crew is just a bunch of chauvinistic pigs, since everyone know the best food is really Italian, and Incanto and Oliveto should be included. And that the truth, because French straw is only in the other person’s eye, and what Italian beam you talkin' about?
*post title by Gothamist Jen
The main complaint is that the Michelin did not get the Bay Area, meaning that their reviewers were not privy to our secrets: that place they omitted is popular not because it's over-rated and people buy in the hype, that place is good and the Michelin just does not know the Bay Area. Oh, and that locally sourced organic ingredients trump any other consideration.
Zagat, not to be eclipsed by the Michelin guide, sent Marc Kornblau on KQED’s Forum to mention that they too exist, and they give up to 29 points instead of 3 measly stars (this is *not* an actual quote). Because, lost in the Michelin brouhaha, the new Zagat San Francisco 2007 guide has been released. We did not chat with Nina this year, but we still browsed through our copy. We have a fondness for Zagat, since they cover a wider range of restaurants. Oh, sure, their top 10 places will be the same fancy-pantsy downtown expense account places that you’d find in the Michelin or Bauer’s 4 star restaurants, but the Zagat lists little neighborhood places and "bang for the buck" lists that go closer to our heart and wallet.
Jumping in the fray, the October issue of Wine Spectator made a list of the top 25 San Francisco restaurants, which we read and forgot right away: almost all places fit within a stone's throw of the financial center, and our eyes glazed over, and we returned the copy we had borrowed during our plane ride. We wondered why we had not asked our other neighbor for his copy of Men's Health, the largest men’s magazine, where we could have learned all 9 get-rich-quick scheme and 30 ways to spice up our sex life, rather than indeed, Gary Danko is good, and Michael Mina is great. And we are a large man too!
After all these stars and best restaurant lists, check out the other definitively blue collar end of the spectrum in the picture on the side. This thing is from the Target food court in the Tanforan shopping center: it’s a Tchernobyl mutant pretzel cross-breeding with a cinnabon roll. It is so fundamentally wrong and ugly, it reminded us of the first Alien movie, with the roll in the role of the monster coming out of the womb of the poor astronaut-slash-impregnated pretzel.