Potluck on the Road

Only a Frenchman with an anesthetized palate would dream of setting out on an auto trip without a fat little red book nestled in his glove compartment--the Guide Michelin, France's gastronomical bible, maker and breaker of restaurant reputations from Paris to the Pyrenees. But in the U.S., tourists tend to take better care of their cars than of their stomachs. Four years ago, the dietetically neutral Socony Mobil Oil Co. joined forces with the Simon & Schuster publishing company in a venture to reduce the U.S.'s highway heartburn: a seven-volume domestic imitation ($1 a volume) of the Guide Michelin. Last year, Mobil Travel Guides covering the Northeastern States and the South Central and Southwestern States were released. Last week Guidebooks Nos. 3 and 4 appeared, under the sign of the Flying Red Horse: Great Lakes Area and California and Nevada.

The Dishwater Test. Like the Michelin, which is underwritten by France's Michelin Tire Co., the Mobil guides are partly promotion gimmicks: Mobil frankly hopes that the books "will build our station traffic." Each guide lists local tourist attractions--many of which are so far off the beaten track that they are all but unknown to natives--as well as hotel and motel accommodations; entries duly note the distance to the nearest self-service laundry, and whether sitters are available or pets permitted. But the most important feature of each volume is the restaurant list, compiled for the most part not by gourmets but by reasonably hungry laymen whose knowledge of food could be expected to parallel that of the average tourist.

In charge of the raters are Simon & Schuster Vice President Jason Burger, 44, and Editors Alden and Marion Stevens. Price, service, and even the temperature of the kitchen dishwater--as well as the quality of the food--guided the tasters. Burger, who put in a month's work for Michelin to help him with the Mobil job, reports that some highly rated French eating places would have been ruled out by his staff because of unclean kitchens. A similarity between the Michelin and Mobil scouts: both announce their impending arrival by letter, months in advance; but the inspectors eat incognito, revealing their identity only after they have finished their meal.

Whimsy & Flackery. U.S. restaurants are rated from one to five stars, in contrast to the Michelin's top billing of three stars. In France, Michelin's 1960 edition found ten restaurants worthy of three-star rating; in the four Mobil guides to date, eleven restaurants won the top accolade.* The selections on the whole are remarkably reliable, but devotees of good eating have found much with which to quarrel, particularly in the big cities. Interesting is the fact that two legendary (if perhaps overrated) food towns, such as New Orleans and San Francisco, have only one five-star restaurant apiece, while Chicago, once ignored as a gourmet's town, has three.

Probably the worst mistake concerns Manhattan, where whimsy and flackery seem to have dictated many choices. The guide puts "21," which has fallen on indifferent days, and Baroque (good French cuisine) in the same five-star category as Chambord and Pavilion, two of the world's great restaurants. Arrant nonsense is the three-star billing of P.J. Moriarty's, a saloon with no-star food, compared to the two-star ratings of the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel, Mercurio or Copain.

Cordials & Bicarb. In Texas, where most of the cooking is so bad that bicarb has replaced the after-dinner cordial, many topnotch restaurants, such as Azzarelli's in Houston, are ignored. So many routine drive-ins are listed in Arkansas that top-drawer restaurateurs complain that their own stars pale in comparison.

In Los Angeles, dyspeptic eaters bemoan the omission of La Scala, one of the finest Italian restaurants on the West Coast, and the Cock 'n Bull, whose Sunday hunt breakfast alone is worth a constellation. Many topflight restaurants in raffish neighborhoods lose points to stuffier places in more conventional surroundings. Chasen's rates its four stars more for its pressagentry than its food. On the other hand, the guide has also dug up many outstanding out-of-the-way spots, including Casa la Golondrina in Los Angeles, Spenger's Fish Grotto in Berkeley, and Bimbo's 365 Theatre Restaurant in San Francisco, starred twice by a taster whose appreciation for his crab bella vista was perhaps enhanced by the platoon of undraped chorines onstage. (The guide discreetly lists this as "elaborate entertainment.")

On the Road. Whatever the pros and cons of the big-city selections, the guides do an ambitious job on the road and in smaller towns, where they list not a single five-star restaurant but a number of four-starrers, such as La Cremaillere and Nino's in Bedford Village, N.Y.; The Lodge at Smuggler's Notch in Stowe, Vt; LaDona Luz in Taos, N.Mex.; and the vastly overrated Stonehenge in Ridgefield, Conn.

Generally, reports Editor Burger, food is best in the Northeast, worst in the South and the Great Plains, with regional specialties often an exception. But, says he hopefully, "the food is improving all the time. That is why we will have to scrap the books each year and start from scratch." Meanwhile, give or take a few stars, the tired and hungry traveler driving into Ukiah, Calif., with his family after eight hours on the road, can derive immense comfort from the knowledge that the two-starred Ukiah Travelodge offers a suite for $15 a night, with "crib, $1 ; cot, $2; TV free. Pool. Pets. Cafe adjacent. Self-serv. laundry four blks. Ck-out. 1 p.m. Patio." And just down Route 101, the one-starred House of Garner specializes in smorgasbord, with a special child's plate.

* New York: Baroque, Chambord, Pavilion, "21"; Dallas: La Vieille Varsovie; Los Angeles: Perino's; San Francisco: Fleur de Lys; Chicago: Cafe Bonaparte, Maison Lafite, Red Carpet; New Orleans: Les Patisseries aux Quatre Saisons.

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