Mon Lapin #2 is a surprise.
More restaurants from Montreal than LA is also a surprise 
and I say that as a frequent visitor to Montreal who’s dined at Vin Mon Lapin a couple times.
/r/finedining is loving it 
https://old.reddit.com/r/finedining/comments/1nqrzvb/north_americas_50_best_list_full_list/
I also think the list is shit, but am not surprised
All lists are shit: discuss.
Having eaten at both this year, I don’t know how anyone could rank Saison higher than Kato.
Not my list, my list is the best list and I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain
Not sure I trust you, but what choice do I have.
Perfect shitpost. 
Assume this is true. If lists can be evaluated as shitty there must be some continuum of quality. Some lists will be more shitty and some less shitty. Therefore, evaluation of list quality is still a meaningful discussion.
Valuable context from the NYT article:
The 300 voters for the North American list are a newly selected group, separate from the 120 people in the United and Canada who vote for the global list. The new voters were chosen by eight recently appointed regional chairmen, and consist of “a gender-balanced selection of chefs, restaurateurs, food/restaurant journalists and gourmets,” the organization said.
The identities of the chairs are made public; the voters are supposed to be anonymous, but many are well known in culinary circles.
Michelin’s inspectors eat out anonymously, and their meals and travel are tracked and paid for by the company. Voters for 50 Best are allowed to accept free meals, travel and other perks as part of their research.
Ooof, I gotta say for all Michelin’s flaws, I prefer their model of getting regional tourism orgs to sponsor their guides and not having restaurants decide whether they pay to play.
I get that NYC is a great restaurant city, but more than a quarter of the whole list? C’mon. The board needs to take a real effort to dine in other cities, even if they don’t want to go there.
Best50, they managed to outdo themselves yet again.
No Sushi Sho, Yoshino, or even Hayato, but Royal sushi & Izakaya in Philadelphia is the best sushi restaurant in North America? Classic.
(from royal sushi menu)
Best50 is a solid travel guide at the end of the day to help your journey, but no way are their lists the best of anything. Google the restaurant they added in from Barbados.. those pizzas look to say nicely, not so Best50.
How do we know that the 50 Best folks even went to any of the places you mentioned? Maybe they decided not to go because the restaurants refused to comp them.
My main criticism of 50 Best (and food critics more generally these days) is I think they have agendas other than identifying the best food. I’ll leave it at that.
I am 99% a Michelin guy. My only criticism of Michelin is they don’t identify which restaurants they visited but decided not to include in the guide, but for star purposes that doesn’t really matter because I can only think of one unlisted restaurant that I think should compete for a star (Sushidokoro Miyama).
Interesting take on a company who gets money from cities/areas to bring out new guides and keep the existing ones. Definitely no conflict of interest which could “change” their opinion on many restaurants….
I don’t think Michelin taking money from tourist agencies affects which restaurants they put in their guides.
It affects which areas they create guides for, but I don’t see a conflict of interest there.
It will influence how many restaurants they might include and what standards they will set. I am pretty sure there will expectations from the cities on a significant number of restaurants in the guide (there might be even numbers discussed in the negotiations - I doubt they will spend significant money to have just a 4-5 restaurants in a city guide) in the different categories and they will be included even if they might not meet regular Michelin standards
I’m pretty sure from the list of guides that Michelin makes deals only with tourist agencies for places with enough restaurants to fill a guide without lowering their standards. The California guide certainly doesn’t have sub-par places.
The Colorado guide is a little suspect IMO. I agree with Honkman about the conflict of interest. Not sure why he needs to state his views so snarkily however.
German + southern European genes = snarkiness