Texas’s First Michelin Guide Is Here, and 4 Barbecue Restaurants Got Stars

Texas’s very first Michelin Guide honors the cuisine that the Lone Star State is perhaps best known for.

When the inaugural list was announced on Monday evening in Houston, it included four barbecue restaurants, the very first American-style ones to be honored with a Michelin star. In total, the Texas Michelin Guide bestowed one lone star on 15 restaurants; no spots received two or three stars.

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“Our anonymous Inspectors were impressed by the culinary community across the state of Texas,” Gwendal Poullennec, the international director of the Michelin Guides, said in a statement. “The selection reflects their findings by highlighting uniquely Texas flavors, such as Barbecue and Tex-Mex, as well as several international influences.”

Three of the four barbecue restaurants are in Austin: InterStellar BBQ, La Barbecue, and LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue. The fourth, CorkScrew BBQ, is in the tiny town of Spring, just north of Houston. As Poullennec mentioned, Mexican is also a regionally beloved cuisine that the inspectors favored in the inaugural guide. They gave one star to both Tatemó in Houston and Mixtli in San Antonio.

A couple of Robb Report favorites were similarly well-liked by the Michelin inspectors. Austin’s Hestia, our No. 1 best new restaurant in 2020, and Houston’s March, our No. 2 best new restaurant in 2022, were both added to the guide. Elsewhere, Michelin spotlighted a host of cuisines throughout Texas: Contemporary (Barley Swine), Japanese (Craft Omakase, Tatsu Dallas), American (Olamaie), Spanish (BCN Taste & Tradition), French (Le Jardinier Houston), and Indian (Musaafer) all appear in the ranking.

The Texas guide is just the latest expansion for Michelin in recent years. Tourism departments throughout the Lone Star State contributed funds to help inspectors review the state’s restaurants—a practice that has become relatively common. Similar agreements have helped bring Michelin Guides to places like Atlanta, Florida, and Colorado. Some chefs and restaurateurs in Texas, however, have been advocating for a guide for years, with Texas having one of the largest—and more lauded—restaurant scenes in the United States.

While many of the included restaurants serve your typical fine-dining Michelin fare, it’s pretty remarkable that four barbecue spots made the cut. And with Michelin bestowing its very first star on a taqueria in Mexico earlier this year, our conception of what a Michelin-starred restaurant is might be changing.

Michelin-Starred Restaurants in Texas

Three Stars

• None

Two Stars

• None

One Star

• Barley Swine (Austin)

• BCN Taste & Tradition (Houston)

• CorkScrew BBQ (Spring)

• Craft Omakase (Austin)

• Hestia (Austin)

• InterStellar BBQ (Austin)

• La Barbecue (Austin)

• Le Jardinier (Houston)

• Leroy and Lewis Barbecue (Austin)

• March (Houston)

• Mixtli (San Antonio)

• Musafeer (Houston)

• Olamaie (Austin)

• Tatemó (Houston)

• Tatsu (Dallas)

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