rickster wrote:I'm also curious whether there has been the same dismissal of Michelin ratings in NY and SF. What I've read about NY was along the lines of getting the 2 and 3 stars right and some head scratching about the 1 stars. No idea about SF.

Michelin does not play terribly large on the New Yorker's culinary attention span. This is because--unlike in other places--there is a different primary voice that matters, and it is largely all that matters. That is the New York Times critic's rating. Every New Yorker can recite the NYT's 4 star restaurants; not many could accurately name the Michelin *** restaurants. The NYT is the 800 pound gorilla. New Yorker's read, then forget, reviews by New York Magazine, the New Yorker, Time Out, and other publications.

Michelin is relevant in New York but it is by nowhere the dominant voice. Here in Chicago, it seems Michelin has become (for better or worse, accurate or inaccurate in its ratings) a dominant voice.

PS This is, to a large extent, not only lack of attention to Michelin in NY but also a "dismissal" of its ratings. People flocked to Eleven Madison Park even though for a long time it had no or one Michelin star. People do flock to the Spotted Pig (a gastropub) because it got one star, then they laugh about the rating.

Sure, but we all question the ratings no matter the city. For a long time, Taillevent had three stars (I thought it lost one recently but I may be mistaken) but the food, while very good, is not exactly Alinea. Again, I don't think Chicago is being all that unusual in pondering and debating these rating.

That being said, I pay more attention to Chicago Magazine than I do Michelin. I suspect most in Chicago feel the same way. Michelin is interesting. Chicago Mag matters.

Star ratings are generally fun to discuss because it's one of the few ways in which restaurants are rated as being better or worse than one another. 20-30 years ago, Chicago Magazine's ratings were the most respected in Chicago; people really don't talk about them all that much nowadays. Their current four-star winners are Alinea, Charlie Trotter's, Everest, Ria, Spiaggia, Topolobampo, and TRU, with three and a half going to Les Nomades, L2O, Schwa, and Vie. Also, many years ago, the Mobil Travel Guide was influential on a nationwide basis. They are still published, now as the Forbes Travel Guide; for 2012 they have awarded five stars to about two dozen restaurants nationwide, including Alinea, Trotter's, and L2O, and four stars to Everest, Graham Elliot, Les Nomades, Seasons, Sixteen, and TRU. The star ratings of the Chicago Tribune, in recent years done by Phil Vettel, are regarded mostly as a curiosity at best; he has given four stars to only ten restaurants in the past ten years: Ria, TRU, Courtright's, Alinea, Everest, Spiaggia, L2O, Avenues, Charlie Trotter's, and Les Nomades.

My dad used to put great faith in the Mobile stars. So when I became an adult and began traveling for work, I made a point to try to get to a Mobile 5-star if there was one in any city I went to. It seemed like a better reference than anything else of the best meal you'd be likely to get. I can't imagine their guides weren't directly based on Michelin. I didn't have access to back issues of Atlanta Monthly or Cincinnati Today, or whatever.

nsxtasy wrote: The star ratings of the Chicago Tribune, in recent years done by Phil Vettel, are regarded mostly as a curiosity at best; he has given four stars to only ten restaurants in the past ten years: Ria, TRU, Courtright's, Alinea, Everest, Spiaggia, L2O, Avenues, Charlie Trotter's, and Les Nomades.

The other issue with the Tribune's reviews is that virtually every restaurant reviewed receives a 2- or 3-star rating, which reduces the utility of the ratings (like children in Lake Wobegone who are all "above average"). Contrast this with reviews in Time Out, where a good number of establishments are rated 1- or 2-stars out of 5.

ld111134 wrote:The other issue with the Tribune's reviews is that virtually every restaurant reviewed receives a 2- or 3-star rating, which reduces the utility of the ratings (like children in Lake Wobegone who are all "above average"). Contrast this with reviews in Time Out, where a good number of establishments are rated 1- or 2-stars out of 5.

I haven't studied the subject in detail, but what you describe doesn't sound out of order to me. On the Tribune's scale of 1 to 4, assuming a normal distribution (well, to be precise, approximately normal, since the scale has upper and lower bounds of 1 and 4), 2.5 would be the mean, and if one can't award 2.5 stars, wouldn't most of the places rated get 2 or 3 stars? This doesn't seem to me to be a Lake Wobegonish tendency for all of the children to be above average. Rather, it seems to me to be most of the numbers clustered around the average.

Simililarly, on Time Out's scale of 1 to 5, the mean would be 3. If Time Out's average rating is not 3, but rather less than 3, it means that Time Out reports on more lower-quality places than does the Tribune. Comparing the two scales isn't very meaningful (to me, at least), any more than it would be meaningful to say something weighs less when measured in kilos than when measured in pounds. More meaningful would be an analysis of all of the Tribune's ratings, on its 1 to 4 scale, and all of Time Out's ratings, on its 1 to 5 scale, to see if both approximate a normal distribution, within the defined boundaries of each (1 to 4 for the Tribune, 1 to 5 for Time Out).

I still contend that the Tribune reviews are much more favorable than in other local print media in fact, I say that the reviews are skewed to the left with the vast majority clustered around 2.5-stars and the aforementioned dozen or so at 4-stars but few if any at 1-stars. I cannot recall a Tribune review in that is overall negative. Again, contrast this with Time Out or the Reader, which often publish reviews that are negative, which I find useful (and entertaining).

Doesn't the Tribune review "cheap eats" separately, without assigning them stars? Not only do the the Tribune's Vettel and Time Out use different rating scales, they are sampling from different populations. What you say may be true, but it seems to me that the way to prove it would be a true apples-to-apples comparison, i.e., a set of pairwise comparisons of Vettel's and Time Out's ratings (converted to a common rating scale) for the same restaurants.

Although the announcement isn't supposed to happen until tomorrow, The Empty Bottle just posted congrats to Longman & Eagle for retaining their star on Face Book, so I guess it's starting now.

Three Stars:
Alinea

Two Stars:
Graham Elliot *
L2O*

One Star:
Acadia (N)
Blackbird
Boka
Everest
Goosefoot (N)
Longman & Eagle
Mexique (N)
Moto
NAHA
Schwa
Sepia
Sixteen (N)
Spiaggia
Takashi
Topolobampo
Tru

(N) new addition
* denotes change

Source

I cannot believe Next and Yusho did not receive anything.

Somehow Michelin is getting worse at this the longer they're here.

I'm surprised no one has said anything about Mexique. I live in the neighborhood and go there often. I like it a lot, but I definitely did not expect to see a Michelin star, particularly given the talents at nearby Ruxbin.

Vie is gone? Hmmm.

mgmcewen wrote:I'm surprised no one has said anything about Mexique. I live in the neighborhood and go there often. I like it a lot, but I definitely did not expect to see a Michelin star, particularly given the talents at nearby Ruxbin.

Seconded.

I realize that many restaurants and chefs consider the award of Michelin stars to be a big deal, but for me it means absolutely nothing in terms of where I'll spend my money, particularly in Chicago. I see no discussion of what the reviewer(s) ate at these restaurants and what they thought, or how many times the reviewer(s) visited the restaurants. I have no idea what types of food the reviewer(s) like. I have no idea how service, ambiance and other factors played into the selection process. And of course, I've seen the omissions and the inclusions and the Bib Gourmands - some are just ridiculous to me, while others are merely puzzling.

Years ago, before Internet access, we had access to very few reviews for restaurants: Zagat, Michelin, local newspapers and magazines, and the like were heavily relied upon. So we relied heavily upon those sources for dining advice and paid them much respect. But now, via blogs, social media and sites like LTH, we have access to so much more information regarding restaurants: overall reviews, commentary on what to order, photographs, etc. We have screen names, so we can compare tastes to others and decide which reviews to truly respect, and find out whose tastes match up the best with our own tastes. But I know absolutely nothing about the Michelin reviewer(s), and I don't know all of the restaurants visited.

So while there surely is a lot of discussion generated by Michelin's announcement, my thought is that I'm just very happy for some of the restaurants I really enjoy, which restaurants may benefit from the designation and resulting discussion. But it won't make any difference in terms of where I dine.

This and the recently named Bib Gourmands, are very sad lists. I don't begrudge any of the places that were recognized, even though there are several that are clearly not deserving. Good for them, though. I hope they make the most of it.

The saddest part however, is all the deserving places that were snubbed. I feel bad for any visitor who would come to Chicago and limit him or herself to places on these lists. What a shame it would be for such folks to completely miss out on some of the best and most important restaurants in Chicagoland.

I think lists this poorly compiled actually have the potential to do more harm than good because it's easy to envision someone following these lists, having a series of mediocre eating experiences here and ending up with a woefuly inaccurate and entirely unjustified negative feeling about the culinary scene here in Chicago. Let's hope no one's that foolish.

I truly hope, as BR, posted above, that most people have the good sense and motivation to look beyond the Michelin lists and use more meaningful and realiable resources when planning their trips to Chicago. Michelin may know France but they clearly don't know Chicago.

=R=

DML wrote:Is our reaction here any difference than the reaction in Paris? Sounds like we are being a bit hard on ourselves. Places in Paris lose or gain stars and the earth shakes. Places in Chicago lose or gain stars and the earth shakes. Don't beat yourselves up for caring. Everywhere people both care tremendously and write it off as meaningless. In either city, it is fun to watch. Enjoy the show.

This does a great job of summing up my general attitude towards Michelin. Overall I really love the fact that they are doing a Chicago guide for no other reason than it gives me a better understanding of why people bash Michelin in cities around the world.

This year the things that baffle me are the omissions (either stars or Bib Gourmands) of Next, Yusho, Ruxbin, and North Pond. I'm not going to get into the inclusions of places I'm baffled by, because my general attitude is "good for them, they got lucky". I'm am continually stumped by the fact that Longman gets a star (deserved in my opinion) and Avec doesn't. Hell, I guess I understand that Scofflaw is "just" a bar, but that fits my definition of a Bib Gourmand pretty well.

Anyways, the misses in their judgement just gives me perspective when I travel to other cities.

The Trib pointed out that two of the three restaurants that lost their 1-star rank were the only suburban stars (Vie, Courtright's, the third being Seasons). It could be that the editors wanted to pull back to the Chicago borders, but there's plenty of Bibs outside the walls of the city.

They are talking about this on NPR (WBEZ) 91.5 now.

Michelin editor in Eater:

. "We really wanted to find another Mexican restaurant to give a star to. Chicago has great Mexican food."

- emphasis mine

That explains a lot.

jpeac2 wrote:I cannot believe Next and Yusho did not receive anything.

Maybe they just couldn't get tickets to Next?

Heyoooo!

They really have it out for Paul Virant. One of their editors said something about him trying to do too much, too quickly.

Perennial didn't even get the Bib nod and Vie not only got the star revoked, but also missed the Bib rating. Seems harsh.

We spent quite a bit of time at both Vie & Perennial over the past few months and found them both as good as ever.

Ronnie and I finally agree on something: Michelin Guide Chicago has jumped the shark... already.

To say nothing of the omission of North Pond, Les Nomades, Girl and the Goat (from the star rankings), David Burke's Primehouse, etc. Also, why does Longman & Eagle receive a star but not it's (relative) neighbors Lula and Owen & Engine?