Is it the food? The service? The authenticity? The recently released Michelin Guide for Shanghai has stirred new debate about how restaurants are rated, and who's judging, Mike Peters reports.

With the possible exception of Salman Rushdie, no author seems to generate as much fuss as the collective critics of the Michelin Guide.

"Rightly or wrongly, everyone has something to say about the Michelin Guide," writes Debbie Yong, digital editor of the Michelin Guide Singapore. That's especially true when the French company pronounces for the first time on a city's restaurant scene - true in Hong Kong in 2009, and noisily true in Shanghai just last month.