Your Michelin Guide Update: NYC Out Today, No LA Anytime Soon
The Michelin Guide for New York City hits the shelves today, but don't look for a Los Angeles guide anytime soon. They didn't publish here last year, they didn't this year, and it sounds like they won't next year either. Feast got a short interview with Jean-Luc Naret, Michelin's Directeur Général (proving once again that everything sounds better in French, especially if you add a John Cleese accent, which you would in this case), who summed up his company's reasons for passing over Los Angeles again in a few pithy sentences. 
Michelin did not, it seems, appreciate the reception it got here, either from the Los Angeles Times or from the rest of the public, not because we were as catty as former LAT food editor Leslie Brenner or as calmly dismissive as The Weekly's Jonathan Gold, but because we simply didn't buy the guide. Fair enough -- these are literally belt-tightening times -- but there are more damning reasons.
"We didn't find any 3 stars," says Naret, nor did they "create any," whatever that means. Naret goes on to say that Angelenos are interested not in the number of Michelin stars of a restaurant, but in the number of movie stars eating there. Wow. Don't know about any of you, but some of us leave restaurants when we see TMZ parked out front, not the other way around. Here's hoping that Monsieur Directeur Général Naret has a lovely meal at Mélisse the next time he's there, and that Josiah Citrin seats the man next to Justin Bieber.
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