Customer Reviews

Michelin Guide Paris [With Pull-Out Map]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm sure the restaurants are wonderful, but the Michelin Paris Red Guide in English is exceedingly coy - restaurant reviews with exclamation marks are suspect.

The Red Guides in French are worth struggling with (if you're not fluent in French). This book treats non-French speaking readers like little children.

It also needs proofreading for typos and hyphenation.

I have given a prior Paris Michelin a very enthusiastic review--no longer applicable. The current version is a seriously flawed attempt at a "greatest [somewhat popular] hits" version of a Paris Michelin red guide. We now supposedly have a selection of the "420 best restaurants" in Paris. Far from accurate. Many surprising fillers have made Michelin's cut from the full list. You have to read between the lines--a restaurant that is faintly praised as "not without charm" really means it is without charm. And many restaurants in Paris, along with the entire suburbs, are dropped entirely. The hotel list is significantly pared down from the full book. 60 hotels, that's it. Organized alphabetically, not by location, which diminishes the utility of the hotel list while it hides the tiny number represented. Perhaps the tour groups targeted for this book have already picked their hotels.

Michelin acknowledges it's a smaller list than the Paris section of the full France book, but then goes on to confuse by saying that "This publication presents a larger selection of hotels carefully selected by our inspectors." "This publication" is the big France book with the complete "selection"--not the Paris book you were looking to buy with its even more pared down sub-selection taken from the larger selection. This modern Paris Michelin does in fact have some useful information, e.g., weekend openings on its limited list, but it is so coyly presented for Michelin's own misguided marketing purposes, that most will be better served by an alternative guide.

The 2009 Michelin Guide published in English contains many fewer entries and recommendations than does its French counterpart. The restaurant reviews are accurate in my experience, but it would be preferable to have more, shorter entries. Those of the hotels are even sparser and mainly focus on higher-end options. Worse yet is the hotel reviewer's prose. The word "amazing," grossly overused as it now is, conveys nothing about the quality of an establishment. The French version does not require an advanced knowledge of the language to understand and it is far more thorough.

From Julia Child's "My life in France" or Chelminski's "The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine" one learns quickly the importance the French place on Michelin's ratings of restaurants; it is their golden standard. If you enjoy food, "Michelin Red Guide" will quickly become your indispensable companion. The book is divided into 20 arrondissement (districts) of Paris, each one starting with a colour map and markings of individual restaurant locations (something one will not find in "Zagat") - that is very practical. Only the good, better and the best restaurants are committed place in this book (it's a food guide, not Britannica and the ones which didn't make the cut can almost always serve smoked salmon with capers anyhow). My husband and I found the descriptions of restaurants we tried to be very accurate in regards to food/dishes recommended, ambiance, service and prices. Walking through Paris, we were able to pull a guide and decide where we wanted to have lunch on a particular day. One day, we chose to lunch at Benoit but we haven't made advanced reservations. I pulled my Michelin red book and, with a smile, said: "Oh, what a pity. I've read such a great review about you in Michelin." Well, well. My husband and I enjoyed our lunch at Benoit that day. Thanks to Michelin, we had a great sushi at Isami ("possibly the best raw fish in Paris"), a tiny place into which we would have never wandered on our own. If not for the guide, I would have missed on Gourmand's "the only vestige of the Art Nouveau style is the listed rest room - a must see!" And on, and on...
The Michelin guide provides information on web site addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, accepted credit cards as well as average meal prices for lunch and dinner. This is the only guide my husband and I use while in Paris (I am puzzled with such negative 2009 reviews - we give it, and the 2011 edition as well, the 5 starts). We highly recommend this guide.

This is a much abridged and limited complilation of the Michelin Red Guide to Paris Hotels and Restaurants. This is purported to be the "select" best ideas. Having lived in Paris for 4 years--I disagree. It's very judgemental--and the judgements are flawed. I expected the full Paris section of the France Red Guide. Instead I got a limited and flawed subset. This guide is neither comprehensive nor useful. Save your money.