T A B L E_T A L K Offer your tips to a Table Talker who plans to spend Easter in Paris with his son   Find deep discounts and great selection on the books you need to read at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author       R E C E N T L Y The new North Vietnam By Jeff Greenwald A visit to Hanoi and environs reveals the complicated legacy of the war (03/10/99) Clash of the camels! By Laurie Udesky On Turkey's Aegean coast, wrestling beasts relieve winter's monotony (03/09/99) The wizard of Oise By David Downie Vincent van Gogh still draws painters and pilgrims to the Parisian suburb of Auvers-sur-Oise (03/07/99) Siberian wasteland By Jeffrey Tayler An overland journey exposes a traveler to the hazards of radiation, desolation and snowstorms (03/05/99) The mystic-barber of Selçuk By Gary Mex Glazner How a tonsorial teen in Turkey helped me understand the revelations of Rumi (03/04/99) Browse the Wanderlust Postmark archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		THIS YEAR'S GUIDE HAS MADE A RURAL CHEF NAMED MICHEL BRAS THE HAPPIEST MAN IN FRANCE. BY DAVID DOWNIE | I thought they were talking about soccer league standings or maybe a rugby score. "Twenty-one," said the baker. "Twenty-one," repeated the pudgy guy in front of me buying croissants. Across the street at the cafe on the Rue Saint-Antoine I heard a similar refrain. "Twenty-one?" "Still 21!" As I strolled through the open market on the Boulevard de Ménilmontant near my office a butcher reluctantly left his morning copy of Le Parisien and served a man who looked like a walking sausage. "See, there are still 21," said the man. "The ratings are fixed." A few hours later I deciphered their coded language: It meant Michelin. The news was on the radio, on TV, in all the papers and on the collective tongue of the capital. The Michelin red guide to hotels and restaurants in France had arrived. Michelin: the bible of gastronomes, assembled by an unknown number of secretive inspectors who prowl the country in search not only of humbug and bedbugs to denounce, but of the Delicious, the Luxurious and the Sublime. After a long and fraught winter, nothing reignites the fires of French foodies -- and even normal citizens -- quite like it. Cafe barmen, chefs, gourmets, bakers, candlestick makers, food purveyors and publishers (in search of lucrative cookbook contracts) wait with salivating trepidation for the guide's early-March release. Though it also lists hotels, the real attention-grabbers are the eateries that belong to the "Michelin Star System." It works roughly as follows: One-star restaurants are nifty little luxury places with noticeably good food and coddle-the-client service; two-stars are seriously luxurious with even better food, even more waiters and maitres d' and often valets or other personnel in silly outfits to greet you in a private parking lot; three-stars are veritable temples of gastronomy with an army of maitres d', waiters, coat clerks, bathroom personnel, brass polishing brigades and so on, places where you must plead and wheedle months in advance to get a table upon which you may sacrifice thousands of francs -- hundreds of dollars -- for a dining experience orchestrated by an artist-chef. Ironically, all of this ethereal kingmaking in the restaurant business comes from a branch of a down-to-earth company whose main business is making tires. This year Michelin's little red book went on sale across France and the world starting March 3. Which brings me back to the magic number: 21. Twenty-one is how many three-star restaurants there are in France. The number has remained more or less the same since the rating was introduced in 1934. Everyone has a theory, most of them outlandish, about this number. Supposedly, it derives from divine numerology or the rites of Freemasons; other commentators say it is somehow determined by a Michelin Mafia of selected chefs, foodies and Michelin inspectors, coordinated by the Mysterious Monsieur Michelin (the red guide's director, Bernard Naegellen). It is indeed Naegellen who ultimately decides which restaurants will get or lose a third star, but his judgments are made in concert with his crack team of inspectors. Stars are given and taken away only after many years of study. Was the service perfect every day and night? Was the food exquisite to the appropriate degree? How about the plumbing? Is it in good condition, with gold-plated toilet paper holders? Nonetheless, many otherwise-sane French citizens honestly believe that a chef must die or lose a third star before another chef can get one -- to keep the magic number stable. This year is no exception and the conspiracy theorists are delighted: A famous chef lost his third star, another one got it. N E X T+P A G E | Weeping into their caviar