Michelin no longer the bible for Paris’s top eateries: food critic

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. Meg Zimbeck, who runs respected online review site Paris By Mouth backed up her argument with research: four months of anonymous dining in all Paris restaurants boasting two or three Michelin stars. After booking into 16 restaurants and paying a total of $8,086 for the meals, she found that Michelin’s recommendations didn’t always deliver. Lesser-known upstart eateries offered far better value, she said. She rated the Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athenee restaurant in the five-star Plaza Athenee Hotel near the Champs-Elysees as the worst of all the top-tier listings she tried.

If you want to know what’s happening in Paris right now you don’t look to the Michelin guide. It’s backwards looking, it’s not looking around at what’s happening in the lower tiers.

American food critic Meg Zimbeck

The keynote dishes at some of the restaurants are no better – and sometimes worse – than those found in far-cheaper little restaurants in less-chic eastern Paris. Zimbeck’s favourites for exceptional, modern French cooking won’t feature on the Michelin’s elite list. Their lunch menus are priced at just 10 per cent of the three-star places, starting around $34-$56. Among them are Restaurant David Toutain, a wood-themed place on the Left Bank, and Septime, an inventive spot hidden away in Paris’s east.

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