Customer Reviews

Michelin Red Guide 2006 New York City: Hotels & Restaurants (Michelin Red Guides)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I've happily used Michelin Guides when travelling in Europe, and as a New York City resident and something of a foodie (okay, glutton) I looked forward to this guide with a great deal of interest. The writeups for the restaurants that I'm familiar with seem accurate for the most part, though one could quibble endlessly about who got stars and who didn't.

The overall results are mixed, however.

Graphically, the book is unquestionably the most attractive and readable of the New York City guidebooks, and the included maps and color photographs only add to the pleasing effect of the presentation. Including recipes from some of the starred properties is an especially nice touch.

The guide is *heavily* Manhattan-centric, however, making only token mentions of restaurants in Brooklyn and Queens and leaving the Bronx and Staten Island off almost entirely; the Bronx's very fine Arthur Avenue restaurant scene is represented by a single restaurant, Roberto's, for instance, and the guide suffers in general from what feels to me like a lack of local knowledge (e.g., some howlers, such as calling the NYC Subway the "Metro," should have been picked up and corrected by a local editor who knows the area... and are there really only *two* restaurants of interest in the entire neighborhood of Harlem? Real New Yorkers know there are more.)

If you're a real foodie visiting New York City, you'll want at least two restaurant books in addition to, or instead of, the Michelin Guide:

-- The Zagat Guide, for breadth of coverage (hundreds more properties than Michelin deigns to report on)
-- The Chowhound Guide to New York City, for much better outer-borough coverage and tips on great, sometimes eccentric and out of the way spots offering great cooking.

As a general New York City map and guidebook, I also heartily recommend the "Not For Tourists Guide To New York City," which, despite the title, adventurous tourists will find indispensable.

Color Pictures. Reviews that are mostly fluff. Glossy pages. Recipes, recipes for goodness sake! How the mighty have fallen. My Red Guide to Italy saved me from a ho-hum meal several times - in Verona, Venice and Florence. And I keep it near my passport whenever the inspiration calls for a trip to You-Rip. This guide is a pale imposter of the famed Red Guides that have given restaurant owners and chefs ulcers for decades. This book is written for out-of-towners and a real New Yorker would probably deem it shelf-ware.

I looked for two of my favorites - Café Des Artiste, Le Refuge and they are not there. Especially surprising since Le Refuge has been in New York Magazine's Top 100 restaurants many times and recent visits confirm consistent quality.

Zagat's and Time Out New York are better, more useful guides. My opinion - This book is barely enough information for an occasional visitor and warm beer for a local.

This guide could have been so much better. I hope they keep working at it. Please, get with the program!

The Michelin Red Guide to New York sticks with their usual European format in some respects and deviates from that format in others. The deviations are not good.

Strengths:
1. It lists only restaurants that are worth listing. Most restaurants in New York are not listed; that is a good thing because most restaurants in New York are acceptable but do not deserve any specific recommendation.
2. Restaurants that are awarded one or more stars are about 50. That is also a good thing. That way you actually know which are the 50 restaurants in New York that are actually worth spending your money on.

Weaknesses:
1. There is even less description of the food itself than in the European guides. Now, if Michelin's guide to Italy had a weakness is that the description of the food is too short. The food description in the New York guide is even shorter! I would like to have a better idea of what I am going to eat if I go to certain restaurant.
2. Each restaurant has a lengthy description of the decor. That in my opinion is overdone.

for those who have seen the information packed Michelin red guides for Europe, this NYC Michelin guide seems like a dumbed down picture book that simply reviews the most commonly known places and adds nothing new. If you have a Zagat guide, why ever would you want this book? Aside from the different rankings that some restaurants receive (which you could summarize in a 20 entry list) in comparison with other guides, there is nothing particularly worthwhile about the book.

Just imagine how much more useful these editors could have made their guide, with tons of short reviews of many local high quality restaurants, to sample the richness of the NYC food offerings. Everyone already knows the top 100 restaurants in the city -- what they would benefit from is an unfamiliar name down the street or in a different neighborhood that is worth trying. The editors could have reviewed 3 or 4x the number of places in a book this size. Instead, here we have one restaurant per page with a silly 1/3 of a page photo of the restaurant interior, and recipes on the facing pages. Is that what anyone bought the book for? It seems that they didn't have enough restaurants reviewed, so they had to add content with recipes (again, with pictures, a colossal waste of space).

Color maps are good, as other reviewers have said, but that was available in the traditional, information-dense format anyway. My suggestion to the editors -- make it a really useful resource by doing the legwork to research more restaurants, cut down the wasteful listing size and present it like the respected versions of the Europe guides. If the book is unacceptably thin as a result, then that speaks for itself and they need to do more work. NYC is not lacking for good restaurants to research. People read the Michelin guide for the rankings, *extensive lists* (only 25 restaurant listings in Brooklyn? 13 in Queens, are you kidding!), and short synopses. Not for rambling reviews and pictures (are we 5th graders?) in cases where it's clear what the situation already is (how is it that Zagat and even the other Michelin guides succeed with just 3 sentences of description?).

In summary, poor choices on the editors' part with regard to usage of page space and design, and an attempt to write a guide (and expand a publishing series' market?) beforegs the listinhave reached a respectable size and quality. Not worth the money once you take a quick look inside for yourself at your local bookstore.

The new for 2006 Michelin Red Guide New York City is not like other Red Guides. The Michelin Red Guides for European countries are listings of hotels and restaurants with codes symbols, and abbreviations ranking each and listing what is offered. There is little or no editorial comment describing the places listed. The books are not published in different languages becuase there are almost no words in the body of the text, just a few pages of introductory text in upt to five different languages at the begining of each book.

The New York City guide is a more a tourist guidebook that limits itself to descriptions of a few of the ten of thousands of New York restaurants and hotels. There are pictures and even recipes from some of the higher rated places, something I've never seen in a red guide before.

Think of this as more a (very) spotty overview of what the editors consider the best New York restaurants and hotels rather than a comprehensive listing of all that's available.

If one accepts this limitation,the book is a perfectly acceptable guide but just not what you would expect if you were already familiar with the red guides.

nicely formatted book, pictures, menus and recipes nice features....but big drawback is not enough lisitngs...both on the restuarant side and especially hotels...numerous major Manhattan hotels not in the book...also many well-known restaurants in NYC not in book either....while reviews aree helpful. Michelin is not Zagat and it shows.....despite a nice effort, in form the Michelin guide is slicker than Zagat, but in terms of news you can use....Zagat is still number 1.....try harder Michelin

i could not use zagat's again after reading through michelin's 2006 guide. sure, people get worked up about who got stars, and far be it a new yorker to try to take an objective look at the restaurants they have been to.

this book contains hundreds of great restaurants in manhattan and is an excellent resource on which restaurants should be professionally recommended while in a certain neighborhood.

i have been looking for a well thought out critique of the new york cuisine for years.

thank you michelin.

It's always fun to see who gets the stars, but beyond that this book was a bit of a disappointment. The reviews of the restaurants I know seemed accurate and fair. And I won't quibble over who got 3 stars and who only got two. There are probably already websites devoted to that. The real issue is the choice of restaurants reviewed at all ... not so much at the high end, but at the middle and low ends where most people dine out most of the time.

For me, part of the joy of New York is how many great mid-priced and cheap restaurants there are, of all kinds. And how many famous ones there are among these--real cultural institutions that are worth a visit if you want to find out what the Lower East Side or Astoria or Williamsburg is about. So many of these are missing in the Guide, and in their place is a long list of very average, often generic establishments. In too many cases, the destination restaurants that define a neighborhood, or even a type of cuisine, are left out. This gives the sense of a book written by outsiders--not what most people look for in a guide.

One quibble I have with the Michelin star system: the gap between no stars and one star is so huge. This makes it difficult to discern between members of that huge range of unstarred, but still tasty restaurants.

Wow, its like going from using Black and White to Color. What a difference from the other books. I love the color maps, the detailed info and the receipes from the chefs.

Clearly one of the best available guides for NYC. I prefer it to Zagat because it has Star restaurant's recepies. Also, as opposed to Zagat, the restaurants are listed by area, which also helps alot.