NEXT week, the Zagat Survey for 2006 will be unveiled with the hoopla Detroit once lavished on new model cars. Standard equipment will include a list of restaurants with “Coolest Loos” – the latest brainstorm from the Zagat hype machine.
But this fall, Zagat has burning rubber on its tail: the Michelin Guide, the notoriously Francophile critical survey arriving in New York for the first time next month. And even though Michelin in Europe is tainted by exposes of crony-coddling editors and out-of-touch “inspectors,” I’m rooting for it to kick Zagat’s burgundy-covered butt.
Nobody who uses Zagat for its handy compilation of addresses and phone numbers is likely to throw out a guide that lists 1,700 places to eat compared with the new Michelin’s 500. But for diners fed up with Zagat’s myriad mistakes, see-no-evil write-ups and ridiculous inclusion of Krispie Kreme and Starbucks at the expense of actual restaurants, Michelin – spiffily retooled and redesigned for the New York market – finally offers a real alternative.
Zagat knows it’s in for a fight: Its flacks have been deluging food writers with goofy e-mails heralding the number of days left before their 2006 book’s release, as if we’re in for a jillion-and-one surprises.
Maybe we will. We’ll go way out on a limb, though, and predict that Union Square Café – the over-the-hill, ’80s-vintage joint that was the first serious restaurant to let customers dress like slobs – will once again share the glory with Le Bernardin and Babbo.
We’ll guess that the new volume will be full of howlers, like listing the Four Seasons under best “continental” along with tourist-trap Sardi’s.
We’ll wager that ballot-box stuffers for perennial favorites will lowball the true cost of dining at them – a snow job on display in the listing for the 2005 book’s most popular place, Gramercy Tavern.
Zagat’s “estimated” price of dinner with one drink and tip is $72 – a truly optimistic “estimate,” given that Gramercy Tavern’s cheapest prix-fixe dinner (no a la carte) is $76 without drink, tax or tip. In fact, dinner with one drink, tax and a modest 16 percent tip will be more like $110!
Once, Zagat helped democratize the whole dining experience. Its courageous idea to let ordinary diners have their say spelled the end of the tyrannical reign of a handful of haughty critics.
Over time, though, it replaced one kind of tyranny with another. In a poll dominated by blocks of like-minded participants, the same places are voted “favorites” and “best” year after year. Weary haunts like Felidia – even Lombardi’s pizza – are preposterously ranked among today’s best.
Michelin has plenty to answer for, too. The guillotine would be too kind for “inspectors” recently revealed to judge a restaurant after dining there once and alone. I cringe over their ignorance of food not French: The meal I had at London’s Hakkasan, the rare Chinese place to earn a Michelin star, was Mott Street at $150 a head. And I’d normally resent a French tire company coming to town and telling us where to eat.
But in fairness, Michelin is not carpetbagging, its counter-attacking. A few years ago, I saw the concierges at the Georges V in Paris – a hotel with its own Michelin-starred restaurant – consulting not Michelin, but the ever-expanding Zagat empire’s new survey of that city.
And Michelin looks like a contenda. Even though the two books could not differ more in methodology, they’ll share the most important quality: convenience and ease of use, thanks to revolutionary changes in the archaic Michelin format.
Michelin’s New York “red book” will little resemble the European ones with their indecipherable blizzard of stars, forks and hieroglyphics. It will cover 500 spots in all five boroughs, more fully described and with color photos. The Michelin people say the splashy edition will be the prototype for a new generation of European guides.
Maybe it will shock Zagat out of its fog, too.
