For those who are nuts about France and Italy

A reader and a friend (and an accomplished travel writer) is looking for editorial and writing assistance with an adventure guide on Rome and central Italy. It can be a very short term thing, and the writer would get some good free food and accommodations, in exchange for putting together reviews. Interested? Visit her website here for more info. I’d do it myself if I had the time.

But the ‘travel’ book that really grabbed my attention this morning was the one exposing the Michelin rating system of (primarily French) restaurants. It is a spiteful little gem, written by a former reviewer who had been part of the Michelin network for 16 years. A NYT article provides a good summary of the raging battle between the company and the reviewer-turned-writer (Michelin Guides are put together behind a solid wall of self-imposed secrecy; the company was desperate to put a halt to the book’s publication, but the author prevailed).

A confession is, I think, in order: I had always wanted to be a Michelin restaurant critic. People have responded to this with comments such as “yeah, restaurant critic – wouldn’t you just love being on the payroll for the NYT and eating out in the city daily?” The answer is no, I would not. I would love to be the anonymous reviewer who bikes around rural France (that’s my imagery) and tries out hidden, little known brasseries and restaurants, where locals still hang their own personal napkins on a peg in the hallway. There are several impediments to this career choice, and I am working on improving my resume before I send it in (a recent history of restaurant moonlighting and a stack of unpublished travel articles that are just waiting to be edited and sent off to airline magazines should help), but I am concerned that the expose of Michelin will dampen my enthusiasm for this long-term project.

On the other hand, I do think that it is a little bit disingenuous for the critic to collect good money for more than a dozen years from the Guide, and then mock the process itself for being somewhat corrupt. The French are groaning now that they will become the laughingstock for having created this powerful instrument – the Red Guide – only to let it be destroyed from the inside. It’s sad to think that this could be the case. How we do love to laugh at the French for their profound food obsession (yep, from field to table… this is an inside joke as many know that I have used this label to describe my meager organizational efforts on behalf of sustainable agriculture), never mind that we offer as an alternative a total life-long commitment to sitting in front of the TV and working our way each day through several bags of chips and packs of M&Ms –certainly a good substitute for growing and serving the perfect melon or ripening the perfect cheese. Dilettante and dabbler that I am, I have nothing but awe and respect for those who spend years or even generations perfecting their craft. Would it be that I were one of them!