Michelin guide top Paris restaurants not worth the money says critic
Meg Zimbeck tests MIchelin-star outlets and finds some disappointing
An American food critic has put France’s famed restaurant bible, the Michelin guide, to the test, and found most of its top Paris listings not worth their exorbitant prices, with lesser-known upstart eateries offering far better value.
Meg Zimbeck, who runs Paris By Mouth, a respected online review site that also provides foodie tours to English-speaking visitors, backed up her argument with research: four months of anonymous dining in all Paris restaurants boasting two or three Michelin stars.
Her findings, published on her site (parisbymouth.com/haute-cuisine/), came out just ahead of the latest edition of the Michelin guide which was launched on Monday at the French foreign ministry.
“My aim wasn’t to take a swipe at the Michelin guide. My aim was to follow their recommendations” and to judge its listings independently, says Zimbeck, who has been living in Paris for a decade and writing about food for most of that time.
Food writers are no longer reimbursed by publications for the restaurant bills they incur, so her project was financed from profits from her company’s tours.
What she found, after booking into 16 restaurants under false names and paying a total €7,150 (HK$63,000) for the meals, was that Michelin’s recommendations didn’t always deliver.
“To spend up to €1,100 on a lunch (for two people) implies that you’re going to have something really life-changing, something that is apart from anything you could experience at a more modest price point. And that is just not the case.”
Usually Michelin-led customers enjoy sumptuous service in extravagant dining rooms in the centre of the city. But the keynote dishes are no better – and sometimes worse – than those found in far cheaper little restaurants in less-chic eastern Paris, Zimbeck says.
However a couple of rival haute cuisine joints – Le Cinq at the nearby George V Hotel and the Pierre Gagnaire restaurant – did live up to their Michelin billing, she says.
Zimbeck’s favourites for “really exceptional, modern French cooking” don’t figure on the Michelin’s elite list, though. Their lunch menus are priced at just 10 per cent of the three-star places, starting from €30 to €50.
Among them are Restaurant David Toutain, a wood-themed place on the Left Bank (which was awarded a star in the 2015 guide), and Septime, an inventive spot hidden away in the east of the city.
“If you want to know what’s happening in Paris right now you don’t look to the Michelin guide,” says Zimbeck. “It’s backwards looking, it’s not looking around at what’s happening in the lower tiers.”
Agence France-Presse
