Local restaurants snag Michelin Bib Gourmand status

Way to go Zola! Congratulations!

Way to go, Vesta.

OH NO now the prices will go up. They are all great places, however !!

@HUNGRY:

If their prices haven't gone up already, they likely won't.

They received the same award last year, some of them for multiple years in a row.

Bib Gourmand adjusts for local economic costs. If prices go up due to rising market rent and labor, then that $40 threshold will rise as well.

Is anyone else shocked that $40/person counts as a budget meal? That's $160 for a family of 4 and the article says that the Michelin employees frequent these restaurants? We might eat like that once every other year.

@Parent
An example of the prices at the maximum would be appetizer $10, Main $20, Wine $10. While that is not Olive Garden pricing, it is good for fine diding. By way of reference to what Michelin usually covers, the starred restaurant in Palo Alto charges about ten times that for dinner.

@Lance Michaels - you say a Michelin starred restaurant in Palo Alto costs 10 times as much as these $40 budget restaurants, so $400 per person for dinner? I think this town really is becoming too gentrified for us. We have never in our lives paid that much for a dinner and don't expect we ever will.

@parent:

The Bib Gourmand restaurants aren't consider a "budget meal." They are consider fine dining locations at "affordable prices."

They aren't intended to represent the same price point as the Chevy's, Olive Gardens, Hobie's, a taqueria, Round Table Pizza, etc.

Maybe Lance Michaels is exaggerating a bit, but for sure, I'd expect a Michelin-starred restaurant to start around $120 per person. Even just one Michelin star is still considered exceptional fine dining.

Heck, your typical decent sushi bar around here starts around $60 per person with one alcoholic beverage.

For sure, a vibrant local economy, career advancement opportunities, and great education has brought affluence to places like Palo Alto and neighboring towns. You can't have all of that and not have some gentrification. That's sheer denial of basic economic forces in a free market economy.

I just re-read this report and I think "parent" has misunderstood what it's describing.

The point of the Michelin Guide is to highlight a few hundred restaurants in the region (a few percent of the total) standing out for quality way above the average.

Among those few hundred, a small minority are flagged "Bib Gourmand" because Michelin's inspectors considered them good values for what they delivered. Many are still "special-occasion" restaurants. (The word "budget" appeared nowhere in the article, it was "parent's" own assumption.) I'd complain sooner about all the other restaurants that charge $40 and *don't* deliver a memorable experience for it.

Yes, there's one (1) restaurant in Palo Alto that may routinely cost $400 or so per person. It's an exotic avant-garde high-end place, not for all tastes among even people who could easily afford it. It's an extreme example of a special-occasion restaurant. None of this says anything about average local restaurant prices or "gentrification" -- just about the wide range of choices. The more choices, the better! If you've no interest in restaurants at a certain price, don't go there -- problem solved.