Michelin Guide San Francisco Bay Area & Wine Country 2014: Restaurants

I am in China but I love Michelin Guides although there is no Michelin Red Guide for China or any Chinese city. That's why I decided to buy this book as a gift to a friend of mine in California. My friend received the book and told me in an email that it's a great book, that he and his wife know some of the places and will try more places. I really look forward to seeing Michelin Red Guide coming to China.

This is a great book for checking out many Bay Area restaurants and geographical areas like the wine country. The restaurant synopses are very accurate and the ratings are quite fair, if tough. For example, two-star Aqua was our best dining experience this summer during a three month stay in SF, eating out almost every night. And Perbacco was our favorite new place, and got an excellent marking from Michelin. I read and trust Michael Bauer, and we've got Patricia Untermann's excellent Food Lovers Guide to SF, but for having one book, I would take Michelin.

Easy to use and evaluate but there must be a limit to how many possible candidate restaurants and hotels could be visited by inspectors and hence few "discoveries" could be made. The area covered is just right for both residents and visitors to the Bay Area. South to include Paso Robles should be considered.

There are many excellant restaurants in the Bay area. The Red Guide is the most respected guide to plan your trip. It has everything that the experienced culinary traveler expects to know. I hope Michelin will expand these guides to the rest of the USA just like France.

I am french, and for me, Michelin is still the reference. The guide is nicely presented. My only criticism would be that it is not as comprehensive as I would have liked it to be ( when compared to its equivalents in France), especially when it comes to the hotels ( It appears that Michelin only graded the top category hotels. Good hotels that would have made it in a European Red Michelin guide didn't make it in this one). It would have been nice if the survey had extended its reach to Monterey... Well it might be that the limitations were due to the fact that it is their first year in the Bay area, maybe next year all the places that would deserve to be in the Michelin, will be in the Michelin...