The Michelin Man Gets Fat on Sushi

The scores are in. London has a malnourished 50, New York an undercooked 42, Paris a better than most 98 but Tokyo is the Official Restaurant Capital of the World. It has 191 Michelin stars - deliciously one more than the other three combined.

But outside the fat egos and bellies of western foodies does anyone care? Probably not. Certainly not the patrons of most of those recently garlanded restaurants. Writing in The Guardian Jay Rayner notes many of them are tiny, sometimes seating just 5 or 6 diners, and that getting a table there is nigh on impossible without being a blood relative of the chef. I expect the news Michelin now deems them "good in their category" or "worthy of a detour" will not trouble them greatly. And nor should it. They didn't need the blessing of a French motoring guide to tell them they knew how to cook.

Our need to rate, score and classify everything can get quite tiring and when a guide or critic starts to affect the very thing it or he/she is supposed to be a detached observer of, it can get dangerous. I present Robert Parker Junior - the Baron of Bordeaux, the Barossa and Baltimore - as my first exhibit.

I spotted the term "Michelin ambitious" on a restaurant's website recently. It made my toes curl, immediately conjuring up images of over-designed plates and nasty copies of Gordon Ramsay dishes pinched from one of his books. Oh, the stink of culinary desperation. This was a restaurant trying to second guess inspectors, imitating others and not being true to itself and, more importantly, its punters.

Is cooking simple good food and keeping you customers happy no longer enough? I wish more restaurateurs would stop reaching so purposefully for the Stars. The irony being that, like Japan, if you ignore Michelin and do what you are good at you might just find the tyre man comes looking for you.