Detour ahead for Michelin

So, for the third year in a row, the coveted, eagerly awaited, zealously guarded Michelin Guide ratings for restaurants in France leaked early last week.

This time the leak came when a bookstore in Corsica unpacked its Michelin boxes and put the books on display a week ahead of schedule and the local newspaper published a story on the three-star changes. Michelin responded by immediately authorizing the release of all the guides and by publicly announcing all changes in star status among the 9,000 restaurants and hotels covered in the guide.

Given that this was the first edition of Michelin, the bible of French gastronomy, to be published under the directorship of Jean-Luc Naret, I would have expected Naret to be angry -- or at least embarrassed -- by the premature disclosures.

No way. When we spoke by telephone last week, he was clearly far more interested in the changes he’s brought to and is planning for the guide. He dismissed the leak as “something that happens, not much we can do about it.”

Naret was in New York when we spoke; he’d gone there to announce that in November, for the first time, Michelin will publish a red restaurant guide in the United States. It will rate the restaurants of New York City.

Naret seemed genuinely excited by this venture, and he told me that if the guide is successful, Michelin will consider publishing guides for other U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, perhaps as soon as 2007.

The Michelin invasion of the United States -- long hoped for by gastronomes here -- was only the first of Naret’s announcements last week.

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Hope for promising chefs

He also disclosed that the 2005 French guide, for the first time, has a category called “espoirs,” which my French/English dictionary defines as “hopes” but which Naret told me the French (or at least those French conversant with Michelinese) colloquially translate as “rising stars.”

These are the restaurants that Michelin inspectors think are the most promising and that will be watched the most closely for possible promotion in the 2006 guide.

There are 33 espoirs in all -- five of which now have two stars and are seen as likely contenders for three-star status in the near future. Ten espoirs have one star and are on the cusp of winning a second star; 18 have no stars but could gain their first star next year if they continue to improve in quality and consistency.

Naret, 44, is only the sixth director in the guide’s 106-year history -- and the first to come to that job from outside Michelin. He’s been a hotelier for the last 20 years, most recently in Barbados, and he told me that he thought his “outsider status” enabled him to look at Michelin “with a fresh eye.”

“One of the things that struck me,” he said, “is that there’s not a lot of transparency in our decision making. Either you have a star or you don’t. That’s it, and that’s unfair to the trade and to their guests and our readers.”

To say that the Michelin process is not transparent must rank as one of the great understatements of all time. Chefs, restaurateurs and diners have complained for years that the process is entirely too secretive. Michelin publishes only stars, symbols and pictographs, no descriptive text, and neither inspectors nor executives ever explain why a given restaurant has won or lost a star in a given year. That secrecy has long been seen as a major shortcoming in the guide.

There were 1,500 promotions and demotions this year, the most important being the elevation to three stars of Le Clos des Cimes, chef Regis Marcon’s charming restaurant in St.-Bonnet-le-Froid, a tiny town of 194 souls in the Auvergne region of France, about 65 miles south of Lyon. Two three-star restaurants were demoted to two stars -- Jardin des Sens in Montpellier, in the Languedoc region of southern France, and Lameloise in Chagny, in Burgundy.

There are now 26 three-star restaurants, 70 two-stars (11 of them newly promoted), 402 one-stars (42 newly promoted) and 470 identified as “bib gourmand” -- establishments that serve “good food at moderate prices.”

I’m not sure why Naret thinks the creation of espoirs makes the Michelin process significantly more transparent, but that, he said, is exactly why the new category was created.

Although Naret denies it, I’m sure this change is also an attempt to counter long-standing criticism that Michelin is too slow to recognize talented newer chefs (a criticism almost as common, and almost as valid, as the criticism that Michelin is too slow to demote long over-the-hill legends).

One of the two-star-hoping-for-three espoirs in the 2005 guide is Maisons de Bricourt in Cancale, a seaside town of 5,200 in Brittany. Naret said the chef there, Olivier Roellinger, “has been talked about as a candidate for three stars for the last three or four years.”

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Three-star aspirations

His designation as an “espoir” formalizes that gossip and also, Naret says, tells Roellinger (and other espoirs) that “they’re very close, almost there, and if they work hard, they can get to the top.”

Consistency is the most important factor for restaurants seeking elevation, especially those with three-star aspirations, Naret said.

“At too many restaurants, our inspectors don’t find regularity across the year. A chef can be a genius one night but not cook at the same quality level the next night. It’s not fair to their guests and our readers to give such a chef three stars until there’s regularity.”

Given the decline of the dollar versus the euro and the resultant, increasingly high cost of dining in France -- especially at the top-rated restaurants -- folks planning to travel to France should welcome the heads-up that the espoirs represent. It gives you a chance to try some of the stars of tomorrow today, before they reach that exalted level and increase their prices accordingly -- and, in many instances, grow complacent.

I’ve had most of my best meals in France at two-star restaurants, and more often than not, when I’ve returned to those that subsequently won their third star, the food just wasn’t as good.

Having been to France -- largely to eat -- 24 times in the last 30 years, I’ve dined in 24 of the country’s 26 three-star restaurants. But because I rely largely on friends and other sources, rather than waiting for a Michelin anointment, I ate in 19 of them before they’d won their third star. (The other five had all won their third star years before I went to France for the first time.) I ate at the newest three-star, Clos des Cimes, in 1994, for example.

Although I’ve also eaten at the four other two-star restaurants listed as espoirs in the new guide, most of the no-star and one-star espoirs are new to me.

But if/when I overcome the disappointment I felt after encountering staggeringly high prices and diminished food quality on my visit to France last summer, I’ll be sure to put a few of them on my “don’t miss” list for a future visit.

Meanwhile, I’ll look forward to Michelin’s entry into the United States. Several Michelin inspectors have been in New York for “a few months” doing preliminary eating, Naret says. The New York book will rate 500 restaurants, and it will be “adapted for America, with more information on the city and more text overall.”

Will any New York restaurants win three stars?

“We never speculate,” he said, “but I don’t expect any problem finding three-stars in New York.”

Will they be at the same quality level as three-stars in France?

“Yes. Our policy is that a three-star restaurant is a three-star restaurant -- the same level in Paris, New York, Belgium.... “

That’s why, he said, the just-published, first-ever Michelin Guide for Austria had no three-star restaurants.

Michelin has been publishing its green regional tourist guides -- for sights, not restaurants or hotels -- in the United States since 1968 and now publishes 10 such guides, including one for California.

Might Michelin consider a single restaurant guide to cover the entire United States, as it does in France and 19 other countries?

“No,” he said. “The U.S. is too big. The costs would be huge for a national guide.”

Naret clearly wants Michelin to expand further. New York, he says, is “a pilot project. We’d like to move to other cities too -- San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston. We’re planning to go into Asia as well. We’re trying to pick the right point of entry. Will it be Shanghai or Tokyo or ... ?”

How successful will the New York book have to be for Michelin to publish in other U.S. cities?

“We don’t have a specific target,” he said. “We figure the first New York guide could sell anywhere from 80,000 to 300,000 copies.”

The French guide usually sells about 500,000 copies a year -- and it’s not always profitable.

The company still sells far more tires than books.

I’ve bought both from Michelin, but I like the books better -- and with espoirs and my own espoir (in its original meaning) for a Michelin Guide in Los Angeles, I expect to like the books even more, whatever their shortcomings.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

How they stack up

Les espoirs, the rising stars in the newly released 2005 Michelin Guide for France:

With 2 stars now

Chateau Cordeillan-Bages, Pauillac

Maisons de Bricourt, Cancale

Le Meurice, Paris

L’Oasis, La Napoule

Le Pre Catelan, Paris

With 1 star now

Chateau de Codignat, Bort-l’Etang

Chez Ruffet, Jurancon

Emmanuel Hodencq, Clermont-Ferrand

Flocons de Sel, Megeve

Goumard, Paris

Guy Lassausaie, Chasselay

Hostellerie de Plaisance, Saint-Emilion

Jacques Decoret, Vichy

La Matelote, Boulogne-sur-Mer

Le Sud, Aiguebelle

With no stars now

L’Atable, Strasbourg

Auberge les Templiers, Vence

Auberge du Puits VI, Merkwiller-Pechelbronn

Avel-Vor, Port Louis

La Bastide Cabezac, Bize-Minervois

Les Berceaux, Epernay

Bec Fin, Dole

Chateau de Marcay, Marcay

Dolce Chantilly, Chantilly

Epicure, Wimereux

Francois Gagnaire, Le Puy-en-Velay

Hostellerie de l’Abbaye de la Celle, La Celle

Ithurria, Ainhoa

Kei’s Passion, Nice

Kinugawa, Paris

Logis de la Chabotterie, Saint-Sulpice-le-Verdon

Relais du Maconnais, La Croix Blanche

La Veranda, La Baule

Three-star restaurants

PARIS

Alain Ducasse (8th arrondissement)

L’Ambroisie (4th)

L’Arpege (7th)

Le Cinq (8th)

Le Grand Vefour (1st)

Guy Savoy (17th)

Ledoyen (8th)

Lucas Carton (8th)

Pierre Gagnaire (8th)

Taillevent (8th)

PROVINCES

L’Arnsbourg, Untermuhlthal

L’Auberge de l’Ill, Illhaeusern

Le Buerehiesel, Strasbourg

Le Clos des Cimes, St.-Bonnet-le-Froid

La Cote Saint-Jacques, Joigny

L’Esperance, Saint-Pere-sous-Vezelay

La Ferme de Mon Pere, Megeve

Georges Blanc, Vonnas

Les Loges de l’Aubergade, Puymirol

La Maison de Marc Veyrat, Veyrier-du-Lac

Michel Bras, Laguiole

Paul Bocuse, Collonges-au-Mont-d’Or

Les Pres d’Eugenie, Eugenie-les-Bains

Le Relais Bernard Loiseau, Saulieu

Troisgros, Roanne

MONACO

Le Louis XV

-- David Shaw

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