User:Cullen328/Sandbox/L'Auberge


 * Keep Where to begin? First of all, a two-star listing in the Michelin Guide creates a very strong presumption though not conclusive proof, of notability.  In all honesty, one Michelin star does so in my opinion.  It would be astounding to think that a two star Michelin restaurant had not received significant coverage in reliable sources, whether or not such coverage from the 1980s and 1990s is readily available online in 2011.  One editor says "the Michelin guide is a directory and nothing more".  This is like saying that the Academy Awards are prizes that Hollywood types give each other and nothing more.  Or, the Nobel Prize is just another award for scientists and nothing more.  Or the Pulitzer Prize is just another award for writers, and nothing more.  The fact is that the Michelin Guide is indisputably the most authoritative reliable source for the notability of fine dining establishment in the world, and only a few hundred restaurants worldwide are rated two stars each year.  Only 13 in Paris this year, and only six in Northern California, where I live.  Another editor says that this restaurant "was alive for only a brief period of time" when the article states that it held one or two Michelin stars for a period of fifteen years, or significantly longer than Wikipedia itself has existed.  That same editor claims to be unable to evaluate the reliability of de Volkskrant although that publication has an article here on English Wikipedia that verifies that it has been publishing since 1919 and is the third largest circulation newspaper in the Netherlands.  There isn't the slightest hint that this newspaper is unreliable.  The fact that sources are in Dutch is in no way a negative, as this is the English language encyclopedia of the entire world, not the encyclopedia of the English speaking world.  The argument has been advanced that an article that gives significant coverage to a restaurant does not establish notability if it also discusses the restaurant's chef in detail.  In response, I will say only that a single in-depth article can be used to establish the notability of two or more topics.  The articles in de Volkskrant allude to in-depth coverage in other publications: "The Dutch restaurant guide Lekker called L'Auberge in late 1996, two months after the opening 'the best restaurant in the Netherlands'." (Google translate).  So, we have the Michelin Guide reviewing the restaurant for 15 years in a row, and two in-depth articles in a major Dutch newspaper, plus a report that a Dutch restaurant guide called it the best restaurant in the country.  I am truly mystified by this nomination.