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Blog Tue Nov 16 2010
Michelin in Comparison
At last night's Michelin Guide pre-launch party at the Violet Hour, I remarked to Tammy Green of Chicago Bites that it would be great to see the Michelin-rated restaurants compared alongside ratings from other guides. Whether I just guessed their plan on inspired it, Chicago Bites delivered, producing a spreadsheet of Michelin, Yelp, Metromix, Urban Spoon and Zagat ratings for all the star and Bib Gourmand winners. Other than the large number of restaurants weren't in Zagat's guide, the only surprise might be how divisive deca is, rating a Bib from Michelin and four stars on Yelp, but only 1.4 stars on Metromix and a 50 percent rating on UrbanSpoon.
Tammy / November 17, 2010 11:00 AM
I think further analysis would show that the longer a restaurant is out there, the more its rating pulls towards its true average. Deca hasn't been out there that long and some of the restaurants that were rated very high/low are also new (Ceres Table). The more polarizing numbers also reflect fewer votes. I like Zagat's approach of letting hype die down before publishing results & question Michelin's willingness to give out bibs to new restos.
There are all kinds of problems with comparing ratings that are collected in different ways over varying time periods.
Though it's fun to look.
-Tammy