Hong Kong and Macau will be the next Asian cities to have their top eateries put on the international culinary map by France’s Michelin guide, the little red book that can make or break a restaurant.
The two cities will each get a guide in December, in English and Chinese, the publisher said yesterday, appearing one year after Michelin took its first step outside Europe and the US and launched a Tokyo edition that rapidly became a bestseller.
“It is our first step to China,” the guide’s director, Jean-Luc Naret, told reporters.
“Hong Kong has a fantastic number of great restaurants here, incredible hotels. And Macau next door is the ‘little Las Vegas,’ which has [had] an incredible boom in terms of restaurants,” he said.
Naret said Beijing and Shanghai were also possible targets for future guides, along with cities throughout Asia from New Delhi to Sydney.
Twelve Michelin inspectors of various nationalities, two of them Chinese, have visited restaurants and hotels in Hong Kong and Macau, he said.
In Hong Kong, they pre-selected 1,200 of the city’s 15,000 restaurants before whittling down the number to appear in the book to between 250 and 300.
VARIETY
Naret would not confirm which restaurants were being inspected or whether any would be awarded Michelin’s coveted three stars, but insisted that some smaller eateries would be examined.
“We hope we can find some very good one-star, two-star and three-star places in very small places,” he said.
Cantonese cuisine with influences from other regions of China is most popular in Hong Kong, a British territory until it was handed back to China in 1997, but the city has a huge number of international restaurants as well.
Restaurants in Macau, returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1999 after 400 years as a Portuguese colony, often mix Cantonese and Portuguese cuisines.
Macau has enjoyed a gambling-inspired boom in recent years, and has attracted top international chefs to serve the VIP gamblers in the luxurious casinos.
Tokyo’s guide shifted 120,000 copies on its first day on sale, and Naret said he was hoping for similar success with the new guides.
STARS
Eight restaurants in the Japanese capital were honored with three stars.
Michelin guides give one star for “a very good restaurant in its category,” two for “excellent cooking worth a detour” and the top three stars for “exceptional cuisine worth a special journey.”
The Michelin guide had been awaited with some trepidation in Tokyo, where critics had questioned whether a Western guide could assess Japanese cuisine in which presentation is as important as the food itself.
Michelin published its first guide outside Europe in New York in 2005.
Much of the New York media skewered it, saying it focused on French cuisine and ignored the sweeping range of restaurants offered by the city’s ethnic communities, but it sold well and led to other US city guides.
The Michelin guide, first published in 1900, introduced its system of star ratings in 1926.
Its evaluations play a crucial part in the fortunes of the chefs who struggle to get into the book and rise in its ranks.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
EYE ON STRAIT: The US spending bill ‘doubles security cooperation funding for Taiwan,’ while also seeking to counter the influence of China US President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law a US$1.2 trillion spending package that includes US$300 million in foreign military financing to Taiwan, as well as funding for Taipei-Washington cooperative projects. The US Congress early on Saturday overwhelmingly passed the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act 2024 to avoid a partial shutdown and fund the government through September for a fiscal year that began six months ago. Under the package, the Defense Appropriations Act would provide a US$27 billion increase from the previous fiscal year to fund “critical national defense efforts, including countering the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” according to a summary
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)