Peninsula restaurants earn Michelin stars, again

It's wonderful to see Baume again with two stars in the Michelin Guide. Bruno Chemel deserves this recognition for his exceptional cuisine and warm and friendly service. You may not get a view of Notre Dame but you get the same dining experience you'd get at the Tour d'Argent in Paris.

I get the point of the simile -- a unique memorable special-occasion experience. And congratulations again to chef Chemel!

But to quibble a little, Tour d'Argent is one of the very oldest operating restaurants in the world, certainly about the oldest in Europe; hasn't been representative at all of avant-garde high-end French cooking in recent decades; and is most famous for (besides popularizing the fork, a few centuries back) (a) pressed duck that comes with a serial number (a marketing gimmick that someone introduced there a few generations ago) and (b) one or more floors of its building consisting of a legendary wine collection from which the highly approachable, full-service sommeliers can humbly and agreeably satisfy most any taste, whether the customer has any wine experience or not. Those features all stood out in our experience of that restaurant, but they do not correspond with anything I hear about Baumé -- especially Chef Chemel's interest in exotic and even "molecular" gastronomy, whence his restaurant's very name. Also, Baumé's wine program seemed kind of cryptic when I inquired -- pairing flights only, or something like that.

Lots of children without enough food to eat, and when they do eat, it's junk because junk is more affordable than healthy food.

Hey, Palo Alto, why don't you solve this problem? Put a generous and practical plan into action before dining at Michelin restaurants. It is shameful to report on extravagances, and even more so to give kudos or quibble over kudos given to restaurants so few can afford to patronize.

This situation is no different from stadium events, operas, amphitheater concerts, etc. whose tickets cost three figures. Most "Regular People" can afford these special entertainments (and special-occasion restaurants are certainly a part of that category) from time to time, not every day. So if you want to look down at such things as "shameful," then follow the full logic of that position and argue that people should never spend their hard-earned money on entertainments or having fun, even occasionally. Actually it is the hospitality industry that has taken many original initiatives to help those in need. And when San Francisco was suddenly damaged in the 1989 earthquake -- when the North Bay cities were ravaged by fires recently -- it was independent special-occasion restaurants that fired up their kitchens and fed the hungry.

Are you kidding 1 Madera is average restaurant not even good 2 The village pup over rated and I got food poising eating there 3 chez Tj ok been there for ever and way to expansive 4 Baume Food that I don't care there is way better places in palo alto that deserve the Star

I agree with Diego, star or no star ...better places to dine.
Bistro Elan, Evia, come to mind.

Not too fear. Chez TJ and its cute house will soon be replaced by yet another boring office building whose murals tout the virtues of progress and the world of tomorrow.

Michelin stars mean a lot to the restaurants. But actually, are they worth such a painstaking work? I was working as a waitress in one of those in the period of spring 2016 till the end of summer this year. The only thing that I remember - obsession with the Michelin star.
Cheers,
Megan Kemp