It may be about to get one, but does Hong Kong really want a Michelin restaurant guide?

For Tokyo, the book's arrival marked the start of a bear run that would see nearly 3,000 points scythed from the Nikkei.

In Los Angeles, it marked the point where the world could legitimately panic about a home foreclosure crisis. In Las Vegas, it marked the precise moment that America’s wallets decided they were no longer in frittering mode.

It may be a great honour. It may be notionally good for tourism. But the publication of the red Michelin Guide has hardly been an unqualified bonanza for the cities it covers. Since 2005, none of the metropolises on which Michelin has bestowed its celebrated restaurant guide – that includes New York and San Francisco – is noticeably more buoyant.

And now it seems the Gallic gourmands are turning their attention towards the eating scene in Hong Kong. It will be the second of Michelin’s high-end foraging missions in Asia, and the rumour is that Singapore is next on its list. So should the seething capital of crispy duck and shrimp dumplings be whooping or weeping?

The answer depends on whether the publication of a Michelin guide represents a leading or lagging indicator of economic prospects for the city and surrounding metropolitan economy concerned.

The optimist and the tourism board would have Michelin coverage initiation as a leading indicator, and a positive one at that.

Michelin’s secret squadron of gluttonous critics present themselves as the pioneers of global fine eating. For a place and its culinary gifts to be “discovered” by them fanfares its arrival on the world stage of Great Cities. Once so branded, how on earth could that city’s fortunes head anywhere other than up? It is not totally unlike Morgan Stanley toying with whether to take, say, South Korea out of the emerging market portfolio and crown it as developed. And yet, experience suggests Bibendum has a knack for choosing conurbations approaching their twilight.

No matter how astonishing are its amuses bouches or wine list, a restaurant is really just a small business. Accordingly, the red guide that begins coverage of a new city is tracking a small and medium-sized enterprise sector that has boomed its way to maturity and has only slow decline in prospect.

By the time the Michelin man turns up, the city has thrived and its prime industry — financial services, silicon chips, oil etc — has not only generated regional wealth but also become a prime destination for economic migration.

Foreigners start bowling up, working and spending even more money than the locals. An entrepreneurial celebrity chef eventually takes a punt on the place: initially probably an Australian, swiftly followed by a Frenchman. There is a big, solid economy there, but the excitement of growth is now history.

The reality is that the guide probably represents a belated call on the city’s future strength and financial muscle: logically so, since restaurants follow the prosperity of a city rather than creating it. Hong Kong may have an astounding array of world-class restaurants tucked beneath its skyscrapers, but this is a city with a frightening number of credible regional rivals in shipping, financial services and even retail.

Hong Kong will get the guide whether it wants it or not, but it is important not to dismiss the “lunch is for wimps” effect here: by the time a city’s worker bees have, collectively, developed the time and the taste for Kagoshima puffer fish sushi or Aveyron suckling lamb, another, far hungrier city will certainly be on the rise.

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