Trust Fall

With confidence in the once- sterling endorsement of the Michelin Guide dwindling, diners are turning elsewhere for reliable recommendations.

- Chris Cameron

BEFORE A RECENT trip to Hong Kong, I did what many travellers do, I googled the local Michelin Guide ratings and booked a three-star table. The menu proclaimed exceptional Cantonese, but what I got left me unimpressed. The right dishes were there, but the quality and service I expected were not. The food was curiously bland, oily, rote—and the waitstaff was so indifferent that I had to beg for my wineglass to be refilled. I've had better meals in linoleum-floor joints in New York City's Chinatown and truly dazzling experiences still at other legitimate three-star efforts such as Thomas Keller’s Per Se and Eric Ripert’s Le Bernardin. So how had this place managed to earn one of fine-dining’s top designations? When I quizzed colleagues in the city, they admitted that the restaurant's decline was an open secret. Its recurring stars were a subject of industry speculation.

But my disappointment in Hong Kong isn’t an isolated case. The Michelin Guide’s lauding of lacklustre restaurants has become so prevalent that experienced diners—bewildered to see stellar performers lose stars or get excluded altogether—have begun to turn elsewhere for solid suggestions.

Others are less generous. For a certain class of diner, the Guide no longer has “the influence, power, or cachet that it used to”, says Michael Lawrence, the former director of operations for Boulud’s Dinex Group who’s now lifestyle manager at Harry Macklowe’s luxury condominium tower One Wall Street.

Day in and day out, he books tables for residents in the canteens of the creme de la creme—Le Bilboquet, The Polo Bar, or Cipriani—restaurants that don’t have stars and never courted the Guide to begin with. But when diners do want to give their taste buds a thrill, they consult their friends, another trusted concierge, or their favourite maitre d’, not Michelin. But if diners are disappointed with the