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3
out of 5
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Recommended with reservations,
December 9, 2008
By westwood95
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"After reading the review above, it appears the reviewer has a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Michelin Guide actually is. In his bottom line, he laments, "The reviewers seem too focussed on the city’s high end restaurants and haven’t spent enough time hitting the streets to find out where Hong Kongers eat." Here's the deal. If you want a dining guide that represents restaurants where typical Hong Kongers eat, skip Michelin. But Michelin is not designed to rate a city's typical eateries. If you are looking for the best fine dining experience the city has to offer, this guide is still probably the first place to look, despite quite a few flaws.
The criticism that an overly misproportionate amount of hotel restaurants are starred seems at least a tad misplaced as well. It is true that many of the best Chinese restaurants are hidden in hard to find locales. While many are excellent dining experiences, it is hard to gauge how many of them would be star worthy. The truth is Hong Kong has the finest collection of luxury hotels in the world. In an effort to keep up with the Jones, all of these five-star properties will throw gobs of money at big name chefs to open extremely high-end restuarants, which at best break even. This makes it difficult for the independent fine dining restaurant to compete. So it's really not surprising to find quite a bit of Hong Kong's starred restaurants in hotels. It is perplexing that Zagat's hotel editor ignores this fact and instead fuels the criticism.
This is not to say there aren't major issues with the guide.
For one, I am shocked that Gaddi's in the Peninsula was ommitted. It is at least as good as any of the one star restaurants on the list and its absense is glaring. Then again, there is talk that Gaddi's asked not to be included in the Guide for whatever reason.
Looking at the starred restaurants, the vast majority of Chinese restaurants are Cantonese. Hong Kong is also the best city in China to sample cuisines from other provinces, many of the same quality as the Cantonese options. It is puzzling that none of them are represented.
Even more curious is the selection of foreign restaurants. Hong Kong has an almost endless selection of world-class eateries representing Japan, Italy, Spain, etc. Yet the only foreign cuisine the Michelin inspectors chose to honor with stars were French. An obvious bias, considering there are Japanese, Spanish and Italian restaurants in Hong Kong worthy of at least a star.
But the original review above missed these important faults. Perhaps the reviewer doesn't have the culinary sophistication to make those observations, although I would expect more from a Zagat editor. Talk about amatuerish.
Besides, asking a Zagat editor his opinion of the Michelin Guide is akin to asking 20th Century Fox their review of the Spiderman premier the same weekend they're releasing the next installment of Star Wars. You aren't really going to get an honest assessment. We're even force-fed a shameless plug for th Zagat Guide at the end of the article.
Here's the real bottom line: You should buy the Michelin Guide Hong Kong if you want to experience some of the best fine dining establishments the city has to offer. The truth is the Michelin star system is the worldwide benchmark for culinary excellence and the restaurants honored in the guide for the most part deserved the stars. While Michelin will hopefully correct its glaring ommissions and biases in future editions, this is an adequate first start. Now, if you are looking for insight into where Hong Kongers typically eat, I suggest you ditch Michelin, Zagat or just about any other guide written by Europeans."
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30 of 39 people found this review helpful.
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