Adrian

how was amarante? what did you drink at l'ambo? didn't know they were giving kitchen tours now.

Or is it just a matter of the cultural debate around hotels? One can analogize grand amenity heavy palace hotels (trad three stars), equivalent hotels in a more modern style (modern three stars), ultra lux small hotels with fewer overall amenities (multi star tasting counters), modern boutique hotels (bitronomic/new paradigm restaurants), small inns (trad bistros), etc., etc. It seems to broadly parallel the kind of cultural splintering we've seen with restaurants. Thing is, no one pretends that they are need to be rated using a single cohesive critical review system (as opposed to the ki

What surprises me is that institutions haven't expanded the star system given it's popularity. It would be very easy to say "The Times star system was built to evaluate a certain kind of restaurant - traditional, formal and, historically, European. While we think the star system is important for evaluating those restaurants, and we think that the star system has proven to us to have great utility for evaluating other cuisines that follow a "fine dining" model, we recognize that not every restaurant in New York falls into that framework, and such a framework is not useful for evaluating the vas

Though it is very common for someone to say "I know restaurant X is two stars and restaurant Y is four stars, but I just like restaurant X better". Which is framed in the language of personal preference vs. objective assessment, but it's a certainly adjacent to this.

It's all so muddy. There was a silly Eater thing they used to do every time a new guide dropped by pointing out that all the restaurants that got stars were French. But then they started having to say "Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc." and the whole thing got very silly. In reality, the system seems to be pretty flexible in that it captures highly technical, ritualized, formal kinds of dining across all nationalities. Obviously international wealth disparities are something (but not everything - see e.g. the absence of indigenous German three-star cooking). As I'm sure you're getting at, the pa

Yes and no. Where there is a somewhat objective set of criteria, ratings can be very effective without subverting criticism itself. An idealized Michelin that is rigorously about French fine dining - or, really, expanded to other cuisines that have a hierarchical system of formal dining - is very functional, and doesn't in any way impeded critical discussion of L'Arpege vs. Noma. In some ways, it frees those kinds of restaurants from critical discussion about whether they are "good" and allows for more discussion about what those restaurants do or represent. Whether you think that's good is an

Granite looks intriguing. How are Neige d'ete, ES, and Yamtcha these days? And is Neso any good?

Added benefit of being open for Sunday lunch and right near the Bastille opera.

LOL man, I was asking for myself! Glad we have independently planned the same trip...

Great minds Bonner? Similar weekend trip planned to Paris in May. Right now, have Comice for night one, L'Ambo for night two, and a lunch a Amarante before the opera on Sunday afternoon. Questions: 1. For night one, is Comice the right choice for a civilized one star meal (also the Canadian angle)? Sota is appealing but looks closed, and, although it's obviously less white table cloth, Septime still has appeal. But then there's a litany from AT, L'Archeste, Pages, etc. and it's hard to find a reliable way to differentiate between them, as there is an absolute paucity of reliable fe

What I am saying is that if you do a search the restaurant does get a fair bit of coverage, especially for a rural restaurant. Outside of the documentary, a quick google search (https://www.google.com/search?q=inn+at+little+washington+reviews&rlz=1C1GGRV_enCA769CA769&oq=inn+at+little+washington+review&aqs=chrome.0.0j46j0j69i57j0l3.15393j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) shows that in the last three years it's been reviewed by Eater, Washington Post, and Forbes, plus articles in Washingtonian and WSJ on the first page of hits. Site specific hits yield a fair bit more coverage in

Not to be a pedant, but why do you say that? They just got 3 Michelin stars and the attendant press, there was a documentary released last year, and quick website scan of eater, Washintonian and WaPo reveals plenty of recent mentions (including a new rave review by Sietsema). Lots of coverage over their COVID response. If anything, it's probably more prominent now than it has been in years. It's not going to get "hot new restaurant" press, but it's not a hot new restaurant.

Other than the documentary? It gets lots of local, regional attention, but, nationally, it does not. Poke around Eater DC and the Washingtonian and WaPo. Pugnacious me would say it's the kind of restaurant that people here say they want but don't actually patronize. More fairly, it's probably not a restaurant that should get a lot of national attention. It's "interesting" as historical artifact, it excellent in its style, it's got a full dining room bolstered by three Michelin stars, but in what way should it command national attention beyond the occasional appreciation? I

Yes man, I was agreeing with you and adding on.