- The star ratings for the restaurants listed are acccurate
- Poor selection of restaurants
- Focus on high end restaurants
- Lack of Chinese restaurants
- Number of Restaurant Reviews - 251
- Number of Three Star Restaurants - 2
- Number of Stars at All Restaurants - 28
The book manages to eat its way through 251 eateries, including Macau, while awarding three stars to just a pair of restaurants, Lung King Heen inside the Four Seasons Hotel and Robuchon inside the Grand Lisboa in Macau.
Many of the star struck restaurants are parked inside high class hotels, a fact that led to a firestorm of criticism in Hong Kong, quite rightly. Many of Hong Kong’s best Cantonese and Dim Sum restaurants are to be found squirrelled away in back alleys and on the twenty sixth floor of nameless skyscrapers. That’s not to say that the city’s first class hotels don’t serve first class cuisine, they certainly do. They just aren’t the only place for a top quality feed. Quite frankly, The Michelin Guide looks amateurish.
Criticism has also focussed on the fact that in the group of twelve reviewers, only two were Chinese and none were Hong Kong locals. Somewhat ridiculously, the list of restaurants in the book is almost evenly split between European and Chinese cuisine. This is a complete misrepresentation of Hong Kong’s dining scene.
Hong Kong was never going to rival Tokyo’s nine, three-star restaurants, but one listing, plus one in Macau, seems miserly. Lung King Heen is the first Chinese chef to ever earn three stars from Michelin, however this shouldn’t be a source of pride for the guidebook, but of shame, They need to eat out more.
Zagat’s Hong Kong Guide can give you a more accurate view of the city’s dining scene, while Hong Kong Magazine and Time Out Hong Kong have the fingers far better placed on the city’s culinary pulse.
Rory Boland is the editor of the hotel section for Zagat Hong Kong
