Le Guide Michelin
French Listening Comprehension
Study Guide
Take a look at the following for help with any vocabulary that you might not
have understood in le Guide Michelin, then take
the test.
| Vocabulary | |
| un bilan | balance sheet, assessment, results |
| bruyant | noisy |
| constater | to notice |
| exigeant | demanding |
| plus de | Plus means "more" and ne... plus means "no more." However, since ne is often dropped in spoken French (learn more), it's only the pronunciation of plus that lets you know what the speaker means: lesson on plus. |
| la retraite | retirement |
| Notes | |
| Guide Michelin | The 105-year-old Michelin red guide remains France's gastronomic reference (along with the less ancient GaultMillau). But its air of humorless authority gets up people's noses, and it does seem to incur more than its share of bad publicity. In January 2005, Michelin had to pull its Belgium edition from stores when it was discovered that a restaurant it had given a rave review was not even open. In 2004 one of the guide's former reviewers, Pascal Rémy, claimed in his book L'Inspecteur se met à table that Michelin did not have enough inspectors to visit restaurants more than once every three years, and that many of the 27 then three-star establishments did not deserve the accolade. Derek Brown, a rare Briton in charge of so venerable a French institution, was called on to tamp down the press fever, which he did effectively. It turned out that Rémy had been sacked after threatening to publish his account, and several months later he lost an appeal against unfair dismissal. Still, larger questions about the power and importance of the Michelin guide remain: plenty of respected food writers believe it has lost its way. Lobbying and special interests determine Michelin's ratings, they say, adding that the Guide ignores the vibrant gastronomic world enjoyed by ordinary people who cannot afford to dine out at a starred establishment. The harshest critic is François Simon, the food writer for Le Figaro, who has said that Michelin is "separated from gastronomic reality." In his review of the 2005 edition, he wrote "How sweet were the times when the Michelin appeared majestically every year. The world envied us then. But today it is on the wane, and with it the influence of France's reputation." With the 2005 edition, France had 26 three-star restaurants, ten of them in Paris. |
| Le guide Michelin part 1
part 2 French Listening Comprehension Exercise |
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| Listen | Study | Test | ||
| Transcript Translation | ||||
| Sound files and transcript
were
originally published in Champs-Élysées audiomagazine (read my review) and are used with the permission of Champs-Élysées, Inc. |
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