Customer Reviews

Michelin Red Guide San Francisco 2007: Bay Area and Wine Country (Michelin Red Guides)

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

 

 

This is a successful launch of Michelin's coverage of the San Francisco Bay Area. As can be expected from any Michelin Guide this has very useful information, including colored street maps, a comprehensive listing and commentary of major hotels and restos. I recommend this guide to visitors to the Bay Area. I would hope, though, that future editions would have more depth and insights to the region's real jewel, its high quality neighborhood restos.

I am french, and for me, Michelin is still the reference. The guide is nicely presented. My only criticism would be that it is not as comprehensive as I would have liked it to be ( when compared to its equivalents in France), especially when it comes to the hotels ( It appears that Michelin only graded the top category hotels. Good hotels that would have made it in a European Red Michelin guide didn't make it in this one). It would have been nice if the survey had extended its reach to Monterey... Well it might be that the limitations were due to the fact that it is their first year in the Bay area, maybe next year all the places that would deserve to be in the Michelin, will be in the Michelin...

What I like about this book is that it's very user-friendly, especially for the City itself. The reader can quickly glance through a neighborhood, and readily find the restaurants' basic price category, food category, "fanciness" (or "category" as they put it), phone number, fax, website, hours/days open, and location on a map. For those of us used to the European guides, this guide goes into far more detail than the European ones--whole paragraphs describe each restaurant and hotel.
The long descriptions, however, seem to hide the fact that this guide is very limited in scope. I feel it's a bit much to say that this is a "Bay Area" guide when only 16 pages (each describing only one or two restaurants) are devoted to the entire East Bay, for example. There are a million people living in Contra Costa County, and 1 1/2 million living in Alameda County, yet only two cities in that entire region are discussed: Oakland and Berkeley. There are also only two hotels listed in this area: the Claremont and the Washington Inn in Oakland. For areas south of San Francisco, only three hotels are mentioned, all in San Jose, and only two in Marin county: Casa Madrona and the Inn Above the Tide, both in Sausalito.
My other major beef with this guide is its Franco-centric opinions. I went to the Bistro Jeanty in Yountville based on its receiving a Michelin Star. Having lived in France for over 4 years, the food there certainly did remind me of a meal one might find in a country restaurant in the south of France. The recipes there were quite standard, however, and the quality of the ingredients nothing to write home about. No way did I find the food there as good as that of Domaine Chandon in the same town. Not only are the menu items at D.C. more unique and obviously carefully tested by trained chefs, but the quality of the ingredients at Domaine Chandon is also superior. I do not even consider the food quality of those two places to be in the same class. Other unstarred restaurants in the area which I considered to be substantially better than Bistro Jeanty include Brix, Mustards Grill, and Tra Vigne. Just because they serve California or Italian cuisine rather than French does not make them inferior.
I should also mention the guide's most famous controversy: giving Chez Pannise (California cuisine) only one star. This restaurant is widely regarded by multiple food critics as one of the best restaurants in the country. The only restaurant deemed worthy of three stars is called... hmm... French Laundry.
I hope subsequent editions broaden the scope of coverage, and also broaden the idea of what constitutes quality cuisine, since I do like the format of the guide. Good quality isn't measured by how closely the food resembles French cooking. And there are two and a half million of us living on the other side of the Bay with lots of good restaurants. "Bay Area" refers to more than the City and wine country...

A very useful book but I wish the format of the French Red Guides could have been preserved. I don't need pictures and one review per page. Compared with French guides the information density is deplorably low.

Always good to get another view on Bay Area restaurants, but one could argue with a lot of their ratings. And the descriptions don't help, restaurants with one star have identical descriptors to restaurants with none. What is unique that drove the ratings???

Easy to use and evaluate but there must be a limit to how many possible candidate restaurants and hotels could be visited by inspectors and hence few "discoveries" could be made. The area covered is just right for both residents and visitors to the Bay Area. South to include Paso Robles should be considered.

So to be included as a No-Star restaurant is a privilege in itself. Makes for a good resource to narrow down neighborhood food choices when one's wondering where to eat. Sometimes I don't care too much about where the Chef went to school, or if his mother-in-law works in the kitchen, too; I'd rather hear more about the food.

There are many excellant restaurants in the Bay area. The Red Guide is the most respected guide to plan your trip. It has everything that the experienced culinary traveler expects to know.
I hope Michelin will expand these guides to the rest of the USA just like France.