Michelin’s website jumps the gun, publishes new restaurant star ratings one week early

Michelin’s new star ratings for U.K. restaurants, scheduled to be published next week, have appeared on the company’s website.

Alyn Williams at the Westbury, Dabbous, Medlar, Hedone, Launceston Place, St. John Soho, Tom Aikens and Trishna are among London establishments that have been awarded a star, according to the site.

Sketch (The Lecture Room) has won a second, as has Simon Rogan’s L’Enclume, in Cartmel; and Michael Wignall at the Latymer, in Bagshot, it says. Heston Blumenthal’s Hinds Head pub, in Bray, is awarded one. The U.K’s four three-star restaurants — Fat Duck, Waterside Inn, Alain Ducasse and Gordon Ramsay — held onto their top rating.

Michelin U.K. spokesman Paul Cordle declined comment and referred calls to the guide’s Paris office, where no one answered the phone almost three hours after the results were cited on the Twitter social-media site. Michelin’s website has since reverted to showing last year’s results.

The announcement was scheduled for Oct. 4. This isn’t the first time the results have appeared prematurely. In 2009, Pied a Terre owner David Moore spotted them on the web. In 2010, a copy of the guide was sent out before publication.

Richard Vines is the chief food critic for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. He is U.K. and Ireland chairman of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards. Opinions expressed are his own. Editors: Mark Beech, Catherine Hickley. To contact the writer on the story: Richard Vines in London at rvines@bloomberg.net or twitter.com/Richardvines. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff at mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.