Red Guide: She gives it three stars

One gray Saturday in March, I went to the Paris Travel Show at Exposition Park in the southwest part of the city. Right in the middle of the huge, packed hall, I found the booth for Michelin Guides, where a salesman showed me almost every book and map on the racks, including, of course, Michelin France 2004, also known as the Red Guide.

With its Bible-thin pages, red ribbon place-marker and cunning symbols, the annually revised book is a travel classic. It was first published in 1900 and was distributed for free by the then-infant tire manufacturer based in Clermont-Ferrand, a town in the Auvergne region south of Paris.

At the time, there were fewer than 3,000 automobiles in France. But Edouard and Andre Michelin, who invented and began producing replaceable rubber tires in 1891, knew there would be no stopping the automobile and that drivers would need touring information.

Thus was born the Red Guide, which included advice on where to find mechanics, gasoline and tire dealers, as well as inns and eateries.

The first edition made this Gallic-sounding pledge: “We promise to strike from this book without pity all hotels reported to us as having poor food, inadequate rooms or toilets, deficient service.”

By World War I there were Red Guides to Morocco, Germany and the British Isles. The last Red Guide to France published before the German occupation in 1939 was secretly reprinted and distributed to Allied forces before D-day.

New guidebook formats arrived, such as the oblong green guides, dedicated to tourist attractions and written with literary flourish, and, more recently, themed guides, such as “Idees de Week-Ends aux Environs de Paris” (about short getaways around the City of Light) and “Michelin Coups de Coeur” (a compendium of small, charming French guest houses, with rooms for less than $100 a night), both available only in French. Now Michelin publishes 650 maps and guidebooks, some in seven languages; it sells 20 million publications a year, in 70 countries, although that represents only 1% of the company’s business.

Some things haven’t changed, above all the Michelin Man, that fat, google-eyed fellow made of tires. His name is Bibendum, from a line in an ode by Horace: “Nunc est bibendum,” Latin for “Now is the time to drink.” He made his debut on an 1898 poster that depicted him lifting a champagne goblet full of spikes, glass shards and other hazards to tires and claiming, “The Michelin tire drinks obstacles.”

Bibendum still waves gamely from the covers of Michelin guides, which remain so full of symbols they seem to be written in some universal language we should all be able to understand effortlessly. “The guides have always been in hieroglyphics,” says Derek Brown, hotel and restaurant director for Michelin, “but when you see a picture of a dog with a line through it, who doesn’t know it means pets aren’t allowed?”

The arrival of each year’s new Red Guide to France, considered the ultimate ranking of the country’s restaurants and hotels, routinely rocks the culinary world here. This year, three restaurants were inducted into the vaunted three-star category, bringing the total to 27 (10 of which are in Paris), defined by the guide as offering “exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.” Brown says Michelin has 70 inspectors for Europe who visit establishments included in the guides at least once every 18 months, although these facts have been disputed recently. They pay their own bills and work anonymously.

If an inspector reveals his identity to a restaurateur or hotelier at the end of a visit, Michelin considers his cover blown and sends a different inspector the next time.

The precise criteria for star-dispensing are known only to Michelin. “If we published guidelines,” Brown says, “we’d have 500 restaurants all the same. We want to encourage the differences that exist.”

Nevertheless, the opaqueness of the system has been criticized. Earlier this year, Pascal Remy, a longtime Michelin inspector, went public with allegations about, among other things, the size of inspection teams, frequency of visits and inspectors’ toadying to big-name restaurants. Michelin denied the charges and revealed that it had earlier fired Remy, who wanted the company to publish his journal about the life of a Michelin inspector. (Another French publisher is to release the book, “L’Inspecteur se Met a Table,” later this month.)

Even disinterested critics have echoed Remy. “All things considered, Michelin does a fair but not great job,” says Patricia Wells, author of “The Food Lover’s Guide to Paris.”

The fierce, sometimes desperate competition among restaurateurs to get and maintain stars has provoked discussion about the Michelin rating system. When renowned French chef Bernard Loiseau, of three-star La Cote d’Or in the Burgundy region, committed suicide last year, it was said he had succumbed to the pressure of maintaining his rating.

“People like that are artistic and fragile,” Brown says. “But we don’t put pressure on anyone. Nobody has to be in our book.”

I have it in my hands now, where, though fat like Bibendum, it fits comfortably. As long as I stay in France, I plan to keep it close by.

For information, the Michelin website is www.viamichelin.fr.

Susan Spano’s “Postcards From Paris” are posted at www. latimes.com/susanspano. She welcomes comments at postcards@latimes.com but regrets that she cannot respond to them individually.