Has Michelin 'lost the plot'? Leading food critic attacks guide's 'bizarre' choices

Few events are more keenly awaited in France than the release of the annual Michelin restaurant guide, when French chefs and their customers find out who has found favour with the oracle of gastronomy.

This year is no exception. But one week before the red guide is due to announce its coveted three-star awards for 2014, a leading French food critic has leaked its decisions and attacked its directors for the "bizarre" choices that favour young chefs.

In a short but pithy column in the weekly magazine on Monday, Gilles Pudlowski bemoaned the days of the Michelin directors "whose competence was uncontested". Ever since the brief tenure of Briton Derek Brown, who was appointed in 2001, the guide had "lost the plot", Pudlowski wrote. He characterised Brown's successor Jean-Luc Naret as a "media playboy" and said his successor Jean-François Mesplède was competent but in the post too briefly.

The Michelin restaurant guides are now run by an American international director, Michael Ellis, and his German deputy, Juliane Casper.

Ellis has said he wants to recognise young chefs. "There's nothing wrong with that," said Pudlowski. "But is that any reason to forget to crown the unchallengeable chefs?"

Pudlowski said that his phone had not stopped ringing since he divulged in his column that the newest three-star restaurant outside Paris to enter the 2014 guide would be l'Assiette Champenoise, in Reims. Its chef, Arnaud Lallement, 39, offers dishes such as black pork with bacon, foie gras and potatoes. Pudlowski said Lallement's rival of the same age in the city, Philippe Mille at Les Creyeres, would have been a worthier choice.