Supposedly, according to the blogosphere, Le Cinq and Taillevent have dropped to **. Le Meurice and L'Astrance go to ***.

I think there's speculation that Helene Darroze goes to ***. Le Pre Catalan goes to ***. Supposedly Grand Vefour also lost a *.

Surprised that no one else has read about this? I think the guide comes out in February officially.

This is probably true, given that it was written by F. Simon in Le Figaro....

Akelarre in Spsain got ***. Or so I read....

I don't recall the Figaro article as being that specific -- did he say Grand Vefour lost a star? I read about it on eGullet.

Where is Akelarre? And who is the chef?

Supposedly Pic gets ***. I had to Google and find out where this restaurant.

I can believe that Le Cinq lost a *. I had lunch there once and I just couldn't see what the hype was. At that time I think it just got *** in a pretty rapid climb.

Pedro Subijana is the chef of Akelarre which is in the Basque country of Spain:

www.akelarre.net

(The website has two "r"s' while the information on it spells the name with one "r.&quot I believe this area of Spain has the most three-stars outside Paris, or something similar.

I heard this from someone; I don't have it as fact, though.

Read the same thing after your post on eGullet....I would guess it is true, who knows, though.

The word "Akelarre" is with two"r". So if they put one..is a typo

Thanks. The logo of the website has one R but there's an accent. Does this double up the R? I don't know anything about Spanish. Does this word mean something?

In Spanish, a single r and rr are actually considered two different letters of the alphabet. There aren't any accent marks on a consonant in Spanish. Actually, I don't think there are accent marks on a consonant in any language that I know of, I think it is called a diacritical mark when indicating a distinctive sound or letter. I don't know how Spanish typesetting works or keyboards, but perhaps that mark indicates the "rr" letter in type and it just comes out looking that way or historically that did indicate a double r in the alphabet. I've never seen a rr indicated that way in any Spanish books I've read or Spanish newspapers, etc., but I only know Castillian, and don't know Catalan. That mark only appears on the logo on the website, not anywhere else even when they use the name of the restaurant. I'm sure it's not a typo on that website which is not amateurish and they are part of Relais & Chateaux. They could have just put in two rr's though, so it's hard to say why they did that, but it looks intentional and the logo is all in caps, which can affect typesetting.

Thanks. Still a mystery, then. The website itself uses one R; that would seem more official than the actual web address, no?

At any rate, I would not quibble about spelling too much when the food is as good as it reportedly is at that restaurant!

ok, I've seen the website It's only the logo, they have put just an r and a diacritic that shows it has to be pronounced strong, as a double r. If you look at the rest of the website it's written with double rr everytime they talk about it so I think they did it that way for aesthetic purposes Akelarre is euskera language, it means a witches reunion where they do magic But we use it also in Spanish, there's also a Goya painting called like that

Thanks. I'm glad I asked!

Don't know about Michelin ratings, but there's definitely an accent mark on ç - and it's a consonant.

StCirq, these are not called accents, but diacritics. Accents are never on consonants in any occidental language.
The "ç" of French and also Catalan language (that's why I have it on my spanish keyboard)is what we called "the broken c", it is used to show that you have to pronounce it not like a normal c but softer, more like an "s" (the way latin americans pronounce the spanish c most times).

The double rr may be written as `r in Basque to show that it must be pronounced rr. It was common practice in Basque, quickly disappearing due to the influence of the rest of languages spoken in the Basque Country.

Aker: he-goat (aka the devil)
Larre: field, meadow.

i.e., the place for magical encounters with the devil...

By the way, the area in the world with the highest concentration of Michelin stars per capita is the BAsque country, more especifically the province of Gipuzkoa.

I can certainly understand this, given the amazing quality of the small sampling of food I enjoyed on a recent short stay.