Pick up a copy of the takeout menu for Jiang Nan Spring and it says at the top, in large red circles, “Michelin 2020” and “Michelin Bib Gourmand 2021.” You’ll find the same on both the front and the back of the business card. Drive up to the restaurant, and there’s a banner in front declaring the blessings of the Michelin Guide.
And chewing on an order of crunchy Shanghai fried shrimp, all that Micheliniana gave me reason to consider my attitude toward the Michelin concept. Which is far more sour than the broth in the hot & sour soup. The Guide was born a century ago, when the Michelin tire company created a travel book for France, to encourage drivers to burn more rubber, journeying across the countryside.
For many years, it dealt exclusively with France, becoming the sine qua non of Gallic guidebooks, with its restaurant ratings of one, two or three stars. For decades, it was the bible for those who lived for meals of larks’ tongues in aspic, and baked ortolan. For those of us who eat moules, marinière and a roast chicken with pommes frites on our trips to Paris, it had little reality.
It was written for those who ate with their pinkies in the air. It was snobbishness incarnate. So much so that some years ago, after going international, the director of the Guide declared they would not be including Los Angeles, where he found the food to be less than “serious.
” When he left, the new director reinstated LA, and sent his team of obsessively anonymous taste.