Path: news.ccsf.jp!tomockey.ddo.jp!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!s19g2000prg.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Declan Murphy Newsgroups: fj.life.in-japan Subject: Re: Tokyo - the Michelin guide? Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2007 22:39:03 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Lines: 35 Distribution: To Hell And Back Message-ID: <846a16cd-045b-4a16-beef-e92cf242cd0b@s19g2000prg.googlegroups.com> References: <92r7l3l59g8e8b1qmhr90rmnol4bseouvq@4ax.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 122.31.203.204 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1196750343 438 127.0.0.1 (4 Dec 2007 06:39:03 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2007 06:39:03 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: s19g2000prg.googlegroups.com; posting-host=122.31.203.204; posting-account=dFdNnAoAAACo_-792nICp6wBtnsk5ZbZ User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Alexa Toolbar),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Content-Disposition: inline Xref: news.ccsf.jp fj.life.in-japan:166448 On Dec 3, 8:49 pm, The 2-Belo wrote: > We sadly announce the death of Declan Murphy on Mon, 3 Dec 2007 02:56:03 -0800 > (PST) after being stricken by fj.life.in-japan Disease. The will states: > > >I only just noticed the following in an email magazine (economist.com) > > >"Michelin launched a guide to Tokyo--its first for an Asian city--on > >November 19th. Michelin's inspectors (three Europeans and two > >Japanese) visited 1,500 of the city's approximately 160,000 > >restaurants, awarding them a controversial total of 191 stars--almost > >as much as Paris, London and New York combined. Eight restaurants were > >awarded the coveted three-star rating, including Sukiyabashi Jiro, a > >small, cash-only sushi restaurant in Ginza, with no menu and a toilet > >shared with neighbouring shops." > > >Very classy. I couldn't find a copy of it in the bookshops today > >though. > > They had a special report on this a couple weeks ago on TV. They had vox pops > from people in Europe saying that the Michelin Guide is "old news", and in fact > some restaurants have since hidden their rating from the general public because > of the tremendous pressure put on their staff to live up to the rating. That seems very unusual. My sister is a chef in Europe and says competition for "hats" is still very frantic. Not just ratings from Michelin though. > Also, there was a curiously large number of restauranteurs who scoffed at > gaigins rating their food. That the staff actually contained Japanese didn't > seem to make much difference to them. Wow - "our French cuisine is so delicately calibrated to those with different intestinal lengths to the French that no French food critic could possibly rate our Frenchiness?"