Tokyo Tops Paris as More Michelin Stars Converge With Finer Food

In 2007, Michelin published its first-ever restaurant guide to Tokyo and awarded the city more stars than even Paris. Jean-Luc Naret, Michelin’s editorial director at the time, was emphatic: Tokyo, he said, was “by far the world’s capital of gastronomy,” a comment that seemed as much an indictment of Paris, and of France, as it was a nod to Tokyo.

Back then, it was no secret that the French had lost their edge in the kitchen, Bloomberg Pursuits will report in its Summer 2013 issue. “The fear is that the muse has migrated,” The New Yorker magazine’s Adam Gopnik wrote of the perceived crisis in French cuisine as early as 1997.