Ahead of the Michelin curve

People love to pick on Michelin. The venerable French restaurant guide -- which goes on sale here next month with its newly disclosed promotion of three restaurants to its top, three-star ranking -- has long been a favorite target of chefs and gastronomes, in France and elsewhere.

But I’ve been using Michelin for 30 years, and though I haven’t found it particularly reliable outside France, I’ve found it invaluable in France. Sure, like all institutions, it’s flawed. It is, however, solid, dependable and encyclopedic -- everything that Zagat, for example, is not. The knowledge and incorruptibility of Michelin inspectors further enhance their credibility and impact.

The key to using Michelin is to use it as a tip service in conjunction with other sources, rather than to blindly follow its three-star trail. I’ve made more than 20 trips to France since 1975, and I’ve never waited for Michelin to anoint a three-star restaurant. I pick an area of France I want to visit -- Paris, Burgundy, Languedoc, the Dordogne -- then look at Michelin’s zero-, one- and two-star restaurants in that area, talk to fellow travelers and food lovers and trust my gut feelings (and my prayers to the Great Chef in the Sky) to make my own choices of the best restaurants.

In that way, I’ve consistently been able to ferret out wonderful food before Michelin’s coronation, and virtually every year when Michelin announces its new three-star promotions, I can indulge in a small smile of satisfaction and say to myself, “Yup, I ate there -- long before they got three stars.”

That happened again this year. So -- big surprise -- did the attacks on Michelin. The ink was barely dry on the announcement of the new three-star winners -- L’Esperance in Saint-Pere-sous- Vezelay, Les Loges de l’Aubergade in Puymirol and La Cote Saint-Jacques in Joigny -- when the sniping began.

This time, the sniper in chief is a former longtime Michelin inspector, Pascal Remy, who broke with the tradition of silence after he was fired by Michelin in a dispute over his desire to publish a book based on his experience as a Michelin inspector.

Among other things, Remy was quoted as saying, “More than a third of three-star restaurants are not of the standard expected.” He also said there are some “untouchable tables” in Michelin -- a comment that no doubt will trigger anew the altogether legitimate complaint that Paul Bocuse, for one, has retained his three stars only because he’s an icon, a living symbol of French culinary excellence, not because his restaurant is still “vaut le voyage” (“worth a special journey”), as Michelin defines its three-star rating.

But controversy is nothing new to Michelin. As the ultimate arbiter of restaurant ratings -- and, often, of a restaurant’s fate -- it’s a big and inviting target. For as long as I’ve been reading it, Michelin has been accused of being too slow to demote over-the-hill legends; too timid to recognize new trends and rising-star chefs; too secretive about its procedures, and too cryptic in its use of symbols instead of words to evaluate restaurants.

There’s an element of truth in all those criticisms. That’s why the rival Gault Millau guide, which christened and championed the nouvelle cuisine movement in the early 1970s, developed an early following. But the founders of Gault Millau are long gone, the company has drifted from owner to owner and it’s never enjoyed Michelin’s image of propriety and integrity. Michelin, now in its 71st year of rating restaurants, is unchallenged as the gastronomic bible of France.

The most recent Michelin announcement gave me an extra reason to smile, though, beyond the ego gratification of having “discovered” all three of the new three-stars well before their three-star breakthroughs. The news reminded me that even apart from the magnificent food, I’d had extraordinary -- and, in one case, bizarre -- experiences at all of them. Without Michelin, I doubt that I would have found any of them, certainly not as early as I did.

Two of the newly named three-stars -- L’Esperance and La Cote Saint-Jacques, both in Burgundy -- are actually returnees to the three-star roster. L’Esperance initially won its third star in 1984 and lost it in 1999; La Cote Saint-Jacques gained its first third star in 1986 and lost it in 2001. L’Aubergade in Puymirol, in southwest France, is the only truly “new” three-star this year.

I first dined at L’Esperance and La Cote Saint-Jacques, both in Burgundy, in 1979. Three years later, when my wife and I decided to take a barge trip in France, we picked the canals of Burgundy, in part because one of the barges ended its weeklong voyage in Joigny, and I wanted to eat again at La Cote Saint-Jacques. But our first night on the barge, the captain told us our chef would make his “best dinner” on our last night together.

I told the captain we had already made reservations for that last night -- at La Cote Saint-Jacques.

Instead of being offended, he immediately said, “Then we’ll just cook our special dinner on the next-to-last night.”

That’s what they did. And the last night, my wife and I disembarked and thoroughly enjoyed Michel Lorain’s food at La Cote Saint-Jacques -- quail eggs in a coulis of asparagus, roast langoustines, and the famous poulet de Bresse.

At L’Esperance, Marc Meneau was the first chef who ever offered to create a dinner for me that was not on the regular menu. I didn’t even know one could do that until he suggested it after seeing how appreciative of his cuisine my wife and I -- two unsophisticated strangers from America -- had been at dinner the previous night.

The highlights of Meneau’s special dinner were a jellied consomme of lobster with caviar and St. Pierre fish en papillote with a watercress sauce. From subsequent meals, I remember astonishingly fresh oysters served in a gelee of seawater, a tartare of pigeon and maybe my all-time favorite dish anywhere: cromesquis. For his adaptation of a 19th century Polish recipe, Meneau combines foie gras, truffle juice, Port, cream and chopped truffles, chills it, cuts it into cubes, covers the cubes with fine bread crumbs and quickly deep-fries them. You pop the entire thing into your mouth at once and are overwhelmed by an explosion of flavors and textures.

With 11 visits over 20 years, I got to know Meneau a bit, and once -- when a friend and I took a 5:30 a.m. train down from Paris to have lunch at L’Esperance -- he sent a car to meet us at the train station. He served us a whole lobe of foie gras and a whole leg of baby lamb that day.

But I always prefer dinner to lunch at L’Esperance because then I can spend the night in one of the rooms in Meneau’s adjoining inn and enjoy the best breakfast in France the next morning: freshly baked croissants and brioches with his homemade preserves. Pain grille topped with melted butter and shaved chocolate. Poached pears. Fresh cherries. Fresh strawberries. Un grand cafe creme.

Meneau calls his breakfast “la sourire de la maison” -- “the smile of the house.” That’s why I was smiling when I read that he’d regained his third Michelin star.

L’Aubergade’s third star provoked an entirely different kind of smile -- a smile of recollected embarrassment.

Friends had touted the creative, truffle-centered cuisine of chef Michel Trama, so I arrived for my first visit -- in 1982 -- in a state of high excitement and anticipation. And then, just as the first course was set on our table, something happened that had never happened to me before and has not happened to me since.

I lost my appetite.

For no reason that I could understand -- then or now -- I suddenly knew that I couldn’t eat a bite. Of anything. I wasn’t queasy or sick, and there was nothing on the plate that I disliked or was allergic to. My appetite just disappeared.

I’ve often found that sparkling water perks up my taste buds, so I quickly ordered a glass. It didn’t help. Champagne is my favorite aperitif, so I ordered a glass. It didn’t help either. Nor did a short walk or a visit to the men’s room to splash cold water on my face. Not wanting to offend the chef or embarrass myself, I pushed the food around on the plate to make it look as if I’d actually eaten some of it.

I did the same thing with the fish course and the main course. The waiter quickly figured out there was a problem, and with each course, he asked if I -- and the food -- were OK. Each time I nodded dumbly -- and with a growing sense of both disappointment and mortification.

Trama’s wife, Maryse, also asked if I felt OK and if there was anything wrong with the food. I didn’t dare say “Je n’ai pas faim” (“I’m not hungry”) for fear I’d be thrown headfirst out the front door for so grievous an insult to the French culinary arts, so I just kept nodding and shrugging, and the waiter kept bringing and clearing dishes.

Then he brought me a sorbet -- Champagne sorbet, as I recall. Gritting my teeth anew, I tried a small spoonful. Hmm. I could swallow it. Then another. It was delicious. Just as suddenly as my appetite had disappeared, it returned. I began grinning madly. Mme. Trama saw my animated face from across the dining room and came rushing over. “On va tout recommencer,” she said. “We’re going to start all over.”

Sure enough, 10 minutes later, the waiter brought my appetizer (a truffled potato cooked in parchment), followed in due course by salmon trout in balsamic vinegar and rabbit with black olives and a fennel compote. Then came another sorbet, cheese and dessert.

I liked the dinner -- and the understanding staff -- so much that I returned to L’Aubergade three more times, twice in 1991 and once in 1998, driving several hours each way each time. I can still remember, from ‘91, Trama’s foie gras and cepe hamburger -- created long before Daniel Boulud attracted attention here with his $29 foie gras and short rib burger at DB Bistro in New York. But what I’ll remember longest is that first night, when my appetite vanished and reappeared.

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You win some, you lose some

When the Guide Michelin for France goes on sale here next month, it will include three new three-star restaurants, the second time in four years -- and only the fourth time in more than 30 years -- that Michelin has elevated more than two restaurants to the top rating in a single year.

Two of the three big winners for 2004 -- L’Esperance in Saint Pere-sous-Vezelay and La Cote Saint-Jacques in Joigny, both in Burgundy -- are actually regaining third stars that they previously had lost.

The only truly “new” three-star in the new guide is Les Loges de l’Aubergade in Puymirol, in southwestern France.

One restaurant -- Les Crayeres in the Champagne city of Reims -- lost its third star after the retirement of its longtime chef, Gerard Boyer.

Some in France had speculated that another three-star restaurant, La Cote d’Or in Saulieu, also would fall, having lost its chef-proprietor Bernard Loiseau to suicide last year, but Michelin did not demote it this year.

There are now 27 three-star restaurants in France, the most in the 71-year history of the guide, whose ratings are followed avidly in France and among gastronomically inclined tourists who visit the country.

Michelin promoted only one restaurant-- Le Meurice in Paris -- from one star to two this year. Thirty others, including three in Paris, were given their first star.

Thirty-three restaurants lost their one-star ratings, and six were demoted from two stars to one -- among them Les Muses in Paris and three well-known restaurants outside Paris -- Chantecler in Nice, Le Bretagne in Questembert and Moulin de Mougins in Mougins, above the French Riviera.

Roger Verge, longtime chef-proprietor of Moulin de Mougins and one of the founders of the nouvelle cuisine movement, retired and sold the Moulin last year. He won a third star in 1974, lost both it and his second star in the 1990s, then regained the second star two years ago.

-- David Shaw

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com. To read previous “Matters of Taste” columns, please go to latimes.com/shaw-taste.