Before a recent trip to Hong Kong, I did what many travelers do: I googled the local Michelin Guide ratings and booked a three-star table. The menu proclaimed exceptional Cantonese, but what I got left me unimpressed. The right dishes were there, but the quality and service I expected were not. The food was curiously bland, oily, rote—and the waitstaff was so indifferent that I had to beg for my wineglass to be refilled. I’ve had better meals in linoleum-floor joints in New York City’s Chinatown and truly dazzling experiences still at other legit three-star efforts such as Thomas Keller’s Per Se and Eric Ripert’s Le Bernardin. So how had this place managed to earn one of fine-dining’s top designations? When I quizzed colleagues in the city, they admitted that the restaurant’s decline was an open secret. Its recurring stars were a subject of industry speculation.
But my disappointment in Hong Kong isn’t an isolated case. The Michelin Guide’s lauding of lackluster restaurants has become so prevalent that experienced diners—bewildered to see stellar performers lose stars or get excluded altogether—have begun to turn elsewhere for solid suggestions.
“The Daniel demotion was really confusing and dispiriting for the chef community,” says novelist and self-described fine-dining hobbyist Jay McInerney. (He’s referring to Daniel Boulud’s eponymous New York restaurant, once a three-star darling, that fell to two stars in 2015 and to one in December. “I don’t understand why Angie Mar [of Le B.] hasn’t received a star by now. She’s cooking at a higher level than most people in Manhattan,” he continues. “I start to question whether Michelin is in sync with the national mood.”
Others are less generous. For a certain class of diner, the Guide no longer has “the influence, power, or cachet that it used to,” says Michael Lawrence, the former director of operations for Boulud’s Dinex Group who’s…