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List briefly posted on Michelin website shows return to fold for Tom Aikens and a fifth star for Heston Blumenthal
In an event now almost as predictable as the release of the official list itself, part of the Michelin guide's famous star ratings for UK restaurants has leaked onto the internet. It shows, among other things, a return to the Michelin fold for Tom Aikens and a fifth star for Heston Blumenthal's dining empire.
The full list for 2009 appeared on a US food blogger's website, while a year later Amazon accidentally sent a restaurant an early copy of the book version. This time the fault seems to be that of Michelin, with the company's own website reportedly showing part of the 2013 list on Thursday morning, a week before the official release.
It was swiftly taken down but not before a series of food writers noted the contents. According to these, three restaurants have been raised from one- to two-star status: chef Simon Rogan's L'Enclume in Cartmel, Cumbria; Michael Wignall's Latymer at the Pennyhill Park hotel in Surrey; and Sketch, the long-fashionable central London establishment of Pierre Gagnaire and Mourad Mazouz.
The website listed eight London restaurants that have gained a single star: Alyn Williams at the Westbury, Dabbous, Medlar, Hedone, Launceston Place, the Soho outpost of Fergus Henderon's St John group, Trishna and the eponymous Chelsea establishment of Tom Aikens.
Aikens, who famously left many suppliers out of pocket when his restaurant company went bust in 2008, has regained a star lost when his restaurant closed for a long refurbishment.
Another recipient of a new star is Blumenthal's Hinds Head dining pub in Bray, Berkshire. It is the chef's fifth star, adding to the single one held by Dinner, his restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in London, and the maximum three awarded to his flagship Fat Duck, also in Bray.
The Fat Duck has reportedly kept all its stars, as have the UK's other top-rated establishments, the Roux brothers' Waterside Inn – yet again in Bray – and the flagship London restaurants of superchefs Alain Ducasse and Gordon Ramsay.
While there was no reason to suppose the list was inaccurate, the Michelin organisation refused to comment. A spokesman in London referred calls to a spokeswoman in Paris, who in turn said queries should be directed to London.
There was, nonetheless, a mass of celebration and congratulation among chefs and restaurateurs on Twitter. "Finishing the lunch menu today seems somewhat harder than normal. Phone crazy," wrote an exultant and newly two-starred Wignall.
Jay Rayner, the Observer's restaurant critic, said the strict and traditional judging criteria for Michelin stars was in danger of making them increasingly irrelevant.
He said: "Chefs do hold an awful lot by this and I'm very pleased for Simon Rogan – he's got his second star. He is a very, very good chef. He's sat on one star for too long. But when we have such an intriguing restaurant scene, the Michelin definitions of what is good and worthy of acknowledgement just seems increasingly antiquated."
The recession had helped introduce a series of less expensive and less formal British restaurants cooking very good food, he said. "All of that is going on either above or below the heads of Michelin. While I'm really pleased for some very, very good chefs being recognised - God knows it's hard enough – Michelin no longer represents in any way a real portrait of what's going on in Britain."