Michelin Tires
The tour guide’s L.A. detour
I’m not dismissing the Michelin guide because so much of it reads as if it were translated badly — from the French, I would say, except that whoever wrote the thing seems to be as ignorant on the subject of French cooking as he is about the Indian or Italian kitchen. And as somebody who has put restaurant guides together himself, I can forgive some of the errors; it is hard work pulling these things together, and something inevitably gets misplaced along the way. I even have to admit that I agree with most of the guide’s assessments: I would snatch stars away from only a couple of the establishments so honored (though I would certainly sprinkle stars more generously throughout), and with l’Orangerie gone and Bastide in flux, there probably is no obvious three-star restaurant in town.
What bothers me is that the guide was so evidently put together as a fly-by-night project showing neither knowledge of nor much respect for Los Angeles, that the usual Hollywood banalities are recycled like so much fryer sludge at the biodiesel plant, and that there is so little imagination at work. In France, at the moment, the main cultural importance of Michelin is as an institution to rebel against, a homogenizing force whose lavish preferences, either real or imagined, jack up prices and fill dining rooms with rich tourists. In Los Angeles, it is merely irrelevant.
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