The Good Life.

Byline: Dorothy Kalins, Tara Pepper, Nick Summers, Linda Stern

Food: French-Fried New York

By Dorothy Kalins

When Michelin published its first-ever guide to New York City restaurants and hotels last week, the name Nicholas Chauvin popped into my head. Chauvin was that 19th-century French soldier whose hyperpatriotism spawned the term "chauvinism." And the Michelin's coveted star list is one Chauvin would love. Of the 500-odd Big Apple restaurants covered in the guide, 39 made the list. Of the top eight--those that received either two or three stars--four are French, and two others cook in the French manner. Is this 1975? I wondered. French supremacy on the restaurant scene has been over for a couple of decades in the United States, and our collective hearts sank when the Michelins failed to recognize how New York has been invigorated by American restaurants of great confidence and skill, restaurants with dazzling finesse and a thoroughly American lack of pretension. Sure, the glamorous Jean Georges still thrills, and we're amazed at how often the chef himself is in the kitchen. But they award three stars to Alain Ducasse (whose chef--sacre bleu! -- was fired during their judging period after The New York Times removed a star) and Thomas Keller's Per Se, when savvy New Yorkers have long ceased confusing great restaurants with the Church of High Food.

Allo ? What about the real New York of Gotham Bar & Grill (open since 1984), the Four Seasons (1959), Gramercy Tavern (1994), Chanterelle (1979) and the recently triumphant The Modern (2005)? They'd be on my three-star list. And what of the food New York really loves--Japanese? Michelin gives two stars to Masa, that sliver of Tokyo in a shopping mall, where it costs $350 just to park your bottom in one of the 27 seats, when five blocks directly south, at the splendid Sugiyama, the chef prepares exquisite kaiseki dishes before your eyes at far more digestible prices.

Italian cuisine, too, is primo in New York, so where's Lidia Bastianich and Mario Batali, not only of Babbo (one star) but Lupa, too? Or Cesare Casella's Beppe, Scott Conant's L'Impero, David Pasternack's Esca and Jonathan Waxman's Barbuto ?

What do stars matter, anyway? In France, among Americans, three stars often means a place largely to be avoided: too formal, too full of itself, too full of American tourists. The fun, the possibility of an authentic experience, happens in the one-stars.