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Chef gives up a Michelin star, reflecting hardship of ‘the Other France’
- meri_dian 9y agoFor anyone who has reached the free article limit for NYTimes, while the article is loading just cancel loading in your browser (this works for me in mobile). The limit popup won't appear and you'll be able to read the article.
- sirmike_ 9y agoadditionally: archive.is.
- mythz 9y agoGreat tip thx. Disabling JavaScript also seems to work.
- Gargoyle 9y agoPaying for a subscription also works.
- cpach 9y agoSure. Might not be an attractive option though for people who already subscribe to multiple newspapers. [Edited for clarity.]
- hateduser2 9y agoOr for people who don’t care about morals and just want free stuff.
- abiox 9y agoi submit that if you transmit data to me, i have a right to observe it. the immoral thing is to expend my bandwidth, cpu and memory with data and content you're obscuring.
- prepend 9y agoSort of. But it’s just postponing the foregone conclusion. Like giving heroin to a junkie.
- TremendousJudge 9y agowhat? who is the junkie in this metaphor?
- hateduser2 9y agoThe death of the nytimes
- icebraining 9y agoIt's actually a good time for that, since it's at 50% discount.
- caoilte 9y agoProbably not for most residents of Montceau-les-Mines... ;-)
- abiox 9y agonot everyone can afford it, and not everyone can pay to subscribe to every website with a paywall that pops up on HN.
- scaryspooky 9y agoOr just clear local storage and cookies for them...
- yodsanklai 9y agoor just browse in "private mode".
- BoiledCabbage 9y agoPeople complain about DRM, and work to destroy any digital industry that works without DRM.
- pvaldes 9y agoOr just thank the newspaper for the former free stuff and stop loading the web this time as they politely ask you; as a sign of respect towards the journalist.
- niuzeta 9y agoOr, take advantage of the holiday sale of 50% for an year: https://www.nytimes.com/subscription/multiproduct/lp8XKUR.html https://www.nytimes.com/subscription/multiproduct/lp8XKUR.ht... We in tech(I presume most people in this community is in tech) thrive because of good contents. Might as well pay for them. :)
- waivek 9y agoor spend money for content
- cylinder 9y agoJust open in incognito mode. Really surprised if anyone on HN hasn't been able to figure this out yet. The method you've described works on AFR.com though
- olivermarks 9y agoThis is another canary in the coal mine example of the rapidly shrinking middle class in the western world IMO
- zhte415 9y agoWhy? Objective?
- influx 9y agoSo weird you used this analogy considering the town was founded because of a mine. Once those minerals are gone most mining towns dry up like this.
- chesimov 9y agoSerious question: does anyone know where to get some good in-depth data which deal with the middle class's fortunes in Europe, and possibly some interpretations?
- pmyteh 9y agoThomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century is an empirical analysis of wealth distribution in capitalist countries over the long term, as well as a discussion of possible causes and consequences. It's very good.
- pkaye 9y agoWhich is apt since this town was found of coal mining and it did have a 160 year run.
- daveFNbuck 9y agoThere are only 18,000 people in this town. To hit his goal of 60 diners a day would require the average person in town to visit more than once a year. How many middle class people are going to spend $130 on an entree on an average Tuesday night? I've never spent that much on a meal and my income is too high to be considered middle class in the US.
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- willlll 9y ago"He could no longer pay for the personnel, produce and precision that go into charging one-star prices." Apparently the NY Times can no longer pay for the precision that goes into subject-verb agreement.
- banku_brougham 9y agoA bit off topic, but journalism thses days is brimming with minor grammatical errors, such as omissions of articles, repeated ‘the’, etc. It seems no one cares enough to hire rigid proofreaders and the software tends to miss little things. Does anyone care?
- nkrisc 9y agoCall it the evolution of language. I'm sure there's a reason, but I always thought it strange that when the subject in singular, the verb often gets an 's' ending (mirroring the plural ending for most nouns) but when the subject is plural (often ending in an 's') the verb normally doesn't get an 's' ending. The frogs play in water. The frog plays in water. Why does the 's' effectively swap locations? Why not, "the frogs plays in water." Or "the frog play in water"? Or why not drops the singular/plural distinction from verbs altogether?
- umanwizard 9y agoWhat makes you think the -s ending is naturally plural, rather than just being completely arbitrary? I am pretty sure the etymology of the plural ending -s and the third person present verb ending -s (which used to be -eth in pre-modern forms of English) are unrelated, and they just sound the same by coincidence.
- nkrisc 9y agoWell at it's core language is sort of completely arbitrary, but that's beside the point I'm making. I'm not debating the origin or why it is the way it is, but simply observing that this is how it is currently and it looks strange and counterintuitive.
- albertogui 9y agoWould it have been possible to change to a cheaper menu while still keeping the Michelin star? There's plenty of affordable — and even cheap — Michelin starred restaurants.
- jsmthrowaway 9y agoThere’s also bib gourmand ratings in the same guide for exactly that, which is something like half a star. Less prestigious, but still an accomplishment. If he were starred and then started serving similar quality at the lower price point, I don’t see why they wouldn’t give him one, unless they consider the PR we are reading now a disqualifier for further consideration.
- notatoad 9y agoMaybe, but there still would have been the worry that the star was scaring people away. Also, I could be wrong but I thing the "Michelin starred food truck" and other cheaper starred restaurants are all outside France, in France there's still much more of a common standard that Michelin starred restaurants feel they need to live up to including experience and price. And of course, it's much better to renounce the star than to lose it.
- carlob 9y agoThis. For example, I talked to the chef of the restaurant that won Le Fooding's best chef in 2017 about his older restaurant and there is a whole movement in France called bistronomie, which is all about serving great creative food, without the trapping of the luxury restaurant. That is no tablecloths, no hierarchy of waiters, just a bistrot, but with Michelin level food.
- kyleblarson 9y agoI was in Miyajima Japan recently and had a Michelin starred grilled sea eel lunch with a beer for 25 bucks.
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- Jabbles 9y agoI am missing something. The chef believes that in order to maintain his star he must do something different to what he was doing to achieve the star in the first place? I am not an expert on Michelin guides, but that seems unlikely. Consider the recent news of the street hawker getting a Michelin star: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/singapore-cheapest-michelin-star-restaurant/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/singapore-cheapest-mi... I wonder if his new menu will be cooked well enough to earn him a star? He has cut his prices and is offering a more down-to-earth cuisine of stews, including the classic blanquette de veau, and serving cod instead of the more expensive sea bass.
- bambax 9y agoDid you read the article? He believes the star hurts him because it signals high prices, which scares away potential patrons. So he asked the guide to take the star down, and is now offering more ordinary and traditional recipes. It should also be noted that many French people are extremely conservative and dislike anything invented after 1950, so the blanquette may please them more than fancy nouvelle cuisine.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoFrom the article his restaurant cannot continue to afford to pay for the personnel, produce, and percision that the star requires. So even if his new menu with economical ingredients was star worthy, it's likely that the level of service in the restaurant won't be the same. Waiters serving more tables, no dedicated sommelier, that type of thing. Also its likely that they won't put as much effort into the visual design of the plates in the kitchen.
- keithpeter 9y ago>> “Maybe the star scared people,” Mr. Mathus said. “I understand. He’s saying, ‘Don’t be scared to come here.’ Here, it’s simple people, with modest incomes.” << 100+ euro menus in a town of 18,000 sounds ambitious. Above quote from previous mayor sounds about right to me.
- DanBC 9y agoBray in Berkshire (UK) has a population of less than 10,000 people, but contains two of the UK's 3 star restaurants.
- Mikeb85 9y agoBray is just outside London, not in the middle of nowhere in Burgundy (which itself is quite out of the way).
- lacogubik 9y agoBeing 5 miles from Windsor castle and also from Eton college might have something to do with it. Heathrow is only 15 miles away on motorway. Bray has about 300 millionaires and Windsor around 900 [1] (few other villages from that list are also just short drive away). [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10054043/Top-ten-most-affluent-villages-in-UK.html?frame=2561506 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10054043/Top-te...
- abiox 9y agoperhaps i'm uncultured swine, but the first i've heard of 'michelin stars' is when a few of these sorts of articles popped up. does it really matter? how much do the stars impact a restaurant's business? i usually just talk to people (even strangers) and ask for personal recommendations.
- antisthenes 9y agoI've never understood the point of Michelin stars or their relative value, compared to, for example, 500 5-star yelp or trip advisor reviews. The last thing I care about is advice on food from a tire company. In fact if it wasn't for Gordon Ramsay related conversations, I would have never known Michelin Stars are an actual thing.
- stephencanon 9y agoYou can easily buy 500 5-star yelp reviews. You cannot easily buy a Michelin star.
- viridian 9y agoCan you? I thought yelp and google were very aggressive about burying businesses for this sort of thing. Maybe you could go on fiverr or something and collect a few, but there's no way that yelp doesn't catch 500 fraudulent reviews. They are way too aggressive with false positives as is, such that a good third of my actual reviews are hidden.
- stephencanon 9y agoYelp is notorious for asking business owners to pay to bury bad reviews. You don’t even need to buy good ones if you can sink all the bad. Trip Advisor was recently in the news for having a #1 restaurant in London that didn’t even exist. AFAIK, there have been no such scandals with the Michelin Guide in recent memory.
- antisthenes 9y agoIn spite of all that, Michelin guide is just about as relevant to the average person as the spot price of uranium. When was the last time you heard "this is not a michelin star restaraunt, I won't eat there" ? The answer should be never.