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

by Michelin Travel Publications (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"An American Michelin Guide is incredibly exciting and a testimony to the evoluation of our dining culture" Clark Wolf -- New York Times, Feb 23, 2005

"The Michelin system is the best anybody has yet devised" -- Conde Nast Traveler, Restaurant Ratings, Sept 2005

..."in fairness, Michelin's a contenda...Michelin's New York guide will cover 500 spots...with fuller descriptions and color photos. -- New York Post, Steve Cuozzo, Oct 12, 2005

Daniel Boulud concerning title, "oldest form of classification and most honest...for food...they are going to raise the bar" -- New York Observer, June 20, 2005

Frank Bruni(NYC Times), Michelin will compliment the city's exciting food and accomodation coverage by adding knowledgable point of view. -- Town & Country, November 2005

Product Description
The Michelin Guide New York City 2006 is the latest title in a world renowned series of hotel and restaurant guides. Michelin’s inspectors have selected over 500 of the best restaurants and 50 of the best hotels in all categories of price and comfort using a rigorous and anonymous inspection process.

This guide is perfect for New Yorkers as well as the 4 million visitors who come to the Big Apple each year.

Key Features: • Over 500 restaurant and 50 hotel selections • Two restaurant listings per page • Detailed descriptions for every esttablishment (in English) • Color photos for hotels • Recipes from chefs at star-rated restaurants • Neighborhood maps highlight the location of restaurants and hotels • Symbols convey a wealth of information in a small space, making the guide portable and easy to use. We use many of the same symbols found in our European guides.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Michelin Travel Publications; Revised edition (November 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 2067115553
• ISBN-13: 978-2067115552
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #596,933 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful but flawed; don't use it as a sole source of information, November 21, 2005

By	Barry T. Campbell (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nothing like the You-Rip versions - Too Much Fluff, December 23, 2005

By	Dom Miliano (Denville, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

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!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars dumbed down & bad use of space, July 8, 2006

By	K. Zhu - See all my reviews

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.