I have mixed feelings about this Guide and I think it's important to see the backstory.

The origins of the Michelin Guide were to be a trustworthy guide for its salesmen travelling around the country. Gradually, it became the de facto standard for an impartial guide that not only checked food quality with experienced, anonymous inspectors but also consistency with repeated visits - all costing a fortune, all more than made back with sales. Chefs would literally kill themselves for losing a star (see [1]). The Gault Millau became the Michelin rival but few other guides or competitors really existed.

This has been true in London or Tokyo as well as Paris. You could trust the Michelin Guide: not only would your meal be good, it would be roughly at the level implied by the stars, and it would always be good.

However, I suspect the internet killed sales of the paper guide and generally, as with movie piracy, reduced the amount of money people were willing to pay for the information. Why pay when you can check any of a thousand blogs and newspapers and grab the latest stars there? So the Guide needed a new strategy and Singapore is sort of the hard launch of it.

This Guide was financed (cannot find a source now) by both the tourism authorities (fair enough) and various corporate sponsors (not so good for impartiality). Various writers (see for example [2]) have pointed out the large presence of Resorts World Sentosa restaurants (this is also where the award ceremony was held) and the absence of young interesting chefs or many restaurants that are on par with the starred.

(Examples: I'm personally surprised not to see Gunther's anywhere in the rankings, since the restaurant has been around for years, is a massive favourite of the community, has a chef with pedigree in Singapore (Les Amis, starred), the service is friendly (I've eaten there in shorts a couple of times surrounded by suits and it was STILL friendly) and despite the eye watering dinner prices there's a $35 set lunch with 3 courses and petits fours which is one of the most generous in Singapore. No mention of Hakumai, where a Singaporean chef with a decade of training and experience at the best sushi-yas is doing very interesting things with the same Tsukuji fish used at every other high end sushi-ya in the country. Pollen is not listed; I haven't eaten there, but corporate friends who have and who do these things all the time often told me they thought it was "the best", and Jason Atherton has stars in London where the standards are higher.)

And then we get to the food courts. Yes, including a chicken rice stall and a bak chor mee stall have gotten the "new Michelin Guide" what they wanted - massive PR, as seen by many of the comments on this thread and virtually every headline everywhere. Yes, hawker food can be good and filling. But it's also quite commonly good. I've not been to either of the starred stalls but friends have and confirm they are nothing that rare - you can probably find a similar quality stall in your neighbourhood.

So, either you star them all - after spending a year and a huge staff to create a good quality guide - or you don't star any of them, because the standard of cooking is far below what - even in Hong Kong - used to pass as the minimum for a star. Just yesterday, I was hesitating between two stalls facing each other, both of whom were making their noodle fresh from flour even as they served customers. This is normal and starring a hawker is like starring a bakery or cheesemonger in Paris (not Pierre Herme, more like your decent neighbourhood bakery) or a chippy in London or a kebab or pizza truck in Berlin. It's a massive departure from what the guide stood for.

On the other hand, Singapore is the ideal city for this departure, because its food review scene is completely and utterly commercialised. I ate yesterday at a delicious, packed restaurant which has 2.5/5 on Yelp and is ignored by bloggers. I've talked to chefs who have confirmed that bloggers and reviewers literally come in and say "I have X visitors, feed me your best food for free" and in some cases "if you don't, I'll slam your restaurant" (one did not, the threat was executed). The bulk of the high spending customers are brand driven - a chef that trained at a French 3* place told me he could not sell his boeuf charolais hanger steak because the customers repeatedly requested wagyu fillet and got angry at him for not stocking it. It makes it hard to spot where are good places to eat and as such everybody relies on word of mouth, friends' recommendations, and so on. Michelin was sorely needed but at the same time, could get away with what they did big time: now a steady stream of affluent foreign tourists will be directed like a hose at the awaiting arms of RSW's various commercial ventures, and the next year's Guide list price can probably go up multiples once the data is in.

I am sad as a Frenchman that one of the last bastions of French excellence has just died out like that. I hope Paris and Tokyo will not follow.

I recommend anybody who wants to understand why the Michelin was a big deal watch "L'Aile ou la Cuisse" [3]. The fight between integrity and encroaching corporate interests is absolutely there, and beyond the comedy, you get the message: journalism is about getting past your short term interests, fighting those who want to use you as a shortcut to profitability, and enlightening your readers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Loiseau#Death

[2] http://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/food/unhappy-with-mich...

[3] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074103/