Michelin-star restaurants in Austin.
Austin has six Michelin-starred restaurants, and all six hold exactly one star: Barley Swine, Craft Omakase, Hestia, InterStellar BBQ, la Barbecue, and LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue. Three of the six are barbecue joints. That is the genuinely strange part, because Michelin handed out eighteen stars across Texas and only four of them went to barbecue at all. The Austin count was seven until Olamaie closed on Sunday, July 19, 2026, after twelve years. Beyond the stars, the guide’s Austin listing runs to fifteen Bib Gourmands and twenty-four Selected restaurants, forty-five entries in all, with three Green Stars awarded on top of that for sustainability. Below, each starred room in detail, then what a seat costs, how far ahead to book, what to wear, and what the four Michelin distinctions actually mean.
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Six Austin restaurants hold a Michelin star, and every one of them holds a single star. Barley Swine sits on Burnet Road, Craft Omakase in Rosedale, Hestia downtown, InterStellar BBQ off RR 620 in north Austin, la Barbecue on East Cesar Chavez, and LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue in south Austin. All six earned the star at the Texas guide’s 2024 debut and kept it in 2025, so none of them is a newcomer to the list. Austin was awarded seven stars in the 2025 edition. The seventh was Olamaie, which served its last dinner on Sunday, July 19, 2026, twelve years after opening, and the guide’s Austin listing now shows six.
Hestia
Hestia is the special-occasion booking on this list, a downtown dining room at 607 West 3rd Street built around a custom twenty-foot hearth, with a 400-bottle wine list. The tasting menu is twelve courses at 215 dollars a person, wine pairing available, and the progression moves from raw and smoked through roasted and embered, each course shaped by what the fire does best. You can also order a la carte, so committing to the full tasting is a choice rather than the only way in. Service starts at 5:30pm, running to 10 Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday and to 11 on Friday and Saturday, with Mondays dark and valet at Third and Nueces on Friday and Saturday nights. Hestia belongs to Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group, whose other Austin restaurants include Emmer & Rye, Canje, and Ezov.
Hestia→Craft Omakase
Craft Omakase is a 22-course seasonal tasting counter from chefs Charlie Wang and Nguyen Nguyen, at 4400 North Lamar Boulevard in Rosedale, with a lounge up front and the dining room and counter in back. Seats are booked and paid in advance on Tock at 185 dollars a person, and that figure already includes tax, fees, and a 20 percent gratuity, so the number you agree to at booking is close to the number you actually spend. The menu on the restaurant’s homepage is out of date, so book from the reservation page. Seats are released in timed batches rather than on a rolling window, the booking listing takes parties of one to six, and Michelin suggests arriving a few minutes early for the welcome cocktail. The kitchen is unusually direct about its limits: no vegetarian menu, no accommodation for severe celiac disease, and no working around a seaweed, soy, rice, or fin fish allergy.
Craft Omakase→Barley Swine
Bryce Gilmore’s tasting room sits at 6555 Burnet Road, and it is the least expensive of the three fine-dining stars at 125 dollars a person, with optional beverage pairings priced at market. A 20 percent gratuity goes on every dine-in check, so add roughly 25 dollars a head to whatever you were budgeting. The summer menu runs eight courses, from cured tuna and a potato fritter through chipotle yellowtail and smoked pork shoulder to a dry-aged Akaushi ribeye, with Black River caviar and a smoked Akaushi beef rib available as paid supplements. Booking goes through Tock and takes a nonrefundable deposit, applied to your bill at the end of the night. Dinner runs Thursday through Sunday only, beginning at 5pm Thursday and Friday and 4:30pm Saturday and Sunday, and the three earliest Sunday seatings, 4:30, 4:45, and 5:00, come with 30 dollars off the tasting if you arrive on time. Vegetarian, pescatarian, and gluten-free menus are available on request; vegan and keto requests are declined outright, since chiles, alliums, and mushrooms sit at the core of the recipes. Gilmore also runs Odd Duck and Sour Duck Market, and Odd Duck turns up in the Bib Gourmand list further down this page.
Barley Swine→InterStellar BBQ
John Bates runs the pits at 12233 RR 620 in north Austin. The brisket is plain in the best sense, a salt, pepper, and garlic rub cooked low and slow over post oak, but the rest of the board is where the kitchen shows off: peach tea-glazed pork belly, a beer-brined turkey the restaurant calls tipsy, and house-made sausage that runs to a classic Polish and a beef kielbasa. The sides carry as much intent as the meat, particularly the smoked scalloped potatoes and the poblano creamed corn. Hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11am to 4pm, and the posted close comes with a standing qualifier attached: unless sold out earlier. Four o’clock is an outer limit, not a plan.
InterStellar BBQ→la Barbecue
la Barbecue was founded by the late LeAnn Mueller and is now owned and run by her wife, Ali Clem, with the custom pit in the backyard doing the work. Brisket anchors the board, with house-made sausage and pork or beef ribs alongside, and the slaws and pickles are there to cut all that richness. The address is 2401 East Cesar Chavez Street and the hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11am to 6pm, with Monday and Tuesday closed. Michelin tags it both “Iconic” and “Worth Queueing For,” and the guide is blunt that lines build at peak hours. Ordering ahead online through Toast skips the queue entirely.
la Barbecue→LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue
LeRoy and Lewis opened in 2017 in the lot of Cosmic Coffee + Beer Garden and now runs a full restaurant and bar at 5621 Emerald Forest Drive, off Stassney Lane about a mile and a half west of I-35. The house style is what the team calls New School Barbecue: beef from Texas ranches including Dean & Peeler, Lorene Farms, 44 Farms, and Heartbrand, pork from Peaceful Pork, chicken from True Bird Farm, brisket smoked roughly fourteen hours over post oak in a foil boat, and beef cheeks finished in a beef-tallow confit. Pork ribs are not on the regular menu, because the kitchen only takes delivery of half hogs, and the exception is the Saturday lunch item the team calls Bacon Ribs. Hours run 11am to 9pm Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 11am to 10pm Friday and Saturday, closed Tuesday.
LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue→Why three of the four starred barbecue restaurants in Texas are in Austin
Michelin awarded eighteen one-star ratings across Texas in the 2025 guide, and four of them went to barbecue. Three of those four are here: InterStellar BBQ, la Barbecue, and LeRoy and Lewis. The fourth is CorkScrew BBQ in Spring, north of Houston. What makes that concentration odd is that barbecue almost always lands in the guide’s value tiers instead, and Austin’s own entries show the pattern plainly. Five more Austin barbecue restaurants hold a Bib Gourmand rather than a star: Franklin Barbecue, KG BBQ, Micklethwait Craft Meats, Distant Relatives, and Parish Barbecue. Terry Black’s and Mum Foods sit a tier below that, in Selected. Barbecue runs through all three Austin tiers, and inspectors pushed it into the top one here three separate times.
What a starred meal in Austin actually costs
The spread between the two halves of this list is enormous, and knowing which half you are walking into is most of the planning. The three tasting menus quote their prices on different bases, so they are worth lining up carefully. Barley Swine is 125 dollars a person plus the automatic 20 percent. Hestia is 215 before drinks, tax, and tip. Craft Omakase’s 185 is prepaid and already carries tax, fees, and its own 20 percent gratuity, so the booking figure lands close to the final one. Michelin files all three in its top price band, the one it labels “Spare no expense.” The three barbecue restaurants sit two bands lower, at “A moderate spend,” where a tray of brisket, sausage, and a couple of sides is closer to a good weekday lunch than an occasion. Across the forty-five Austin restaurants in the guide, ten sit in that top band and twenty sit in the two cheapest, so a Michelin meal in this city is more often a counter and a tray than a tablecloth.
How far ahead you need to book
Hestia accepts reservations up to sixty days out, and that is as far ahead as a weekend table can be locked down. Craft Omakase does not use a rolling window at all. It releases prepaid seats on Tock in timed batches, so the useful move is knowing when the next batch drops rather than refreshing daily. Barley Swine also books through Tock and holds your table with a nonrefundable deposit, so a reservation there is a commitment rather than a placeholder, though the money comes back to you as part of the meal. The barbecue three run on a different clock, where timing beats booking. la Barbecue takes orders ahead through Toast, and InterStellar sells until the meat is gone, which can happen well before the posted close.
What to wear
Barley Swine publishes its policy and it is refreshingly short: no dress code, jeans fine, shorts fine, wear what you are comfortable in. The only two things it asks you to skip are glitter clothing and heavy fragrance. That is a fair baseline for the whole list. Hestia is the most formal of the six, so smart casual reads right for a night there, a collared shirt or a dress, and nothing about a hearth-driven room asks for a jacket. Craft Omakase seats you at a counter in a small space for a couple of hours, so pick something you can sit in comfortably and go light on the cologne, because everyone around you will be smelling the same fish you are. At the barbecue three, nobody will look twice at a t-shirt.
What the star, the Bib Gourmand, the Green Star, and Selected actually mean
Michelin runs four separate distinctions and only one of them is a star. Stars mark exceptional cuisine, and Michelin labels the one-star tier “High quality cooking”; two and three stars exist elsewhere in the world, but no restaurant in Texas holds either. The Bib Gourmand is the value award, given in Michelin’s own phrasing to restaurants offering good quality food for a good value, and labeled “Good quality, good value cooking.” Selected Restaurants, the tier Michelin also files under the Plate, is labeled simply “Good cooking”: an inspector ate there, thought it belonged in the guide, and stopped short of a Bib or a star. The Green Star sits outside that ladder altogether and honors sustainable practice, so a restaurant can hold one with a star, with a Bib, or with neither.
Austin’s fifteen Bib Gourmands
The value list is more than twice as long as the star list, and it is where most people will actually eat. The fifteen are Emmer & Rye, Dai Due, Odd Duck, Kemuri Tatsu-ya, Mercado Sin Nombre, Nixta Taqueria, La Santa Barbacha, KG BBQ, Cuantos Tacos, Franklin Barbecue, Veracruz Fonda & Bar, Distant Relatives, Micklethwait Craft Meats, Briscuits, and Parish Barbecue. Mercado Sin Nombre and Parish Barbecue were the two Austin additions in the 2025 guide, out of eight new Bibs statewide. Franklin Barbecue landing here rather than in the star list is the detail that surprises visitors most, and it is better read as a statement about value than as a slight.
The three Green Stars
Dai Due, Emmer & Rye, and Nixta Taqueria hold Austin’s Green Stars. Dai Due and Emmer & Rye were recognized at the 2024 debut, and Nixta earned its first in 2025 alongside Isidore in San Antonio. All three are Bib Gourmands rather than starred restaurants, a useful reminder that sustainability is scored on its own track. Dai Due, at 2406 Manor Road, buys produce, meat, olive oil, and wine from inside Texas and butchers wild boar, antelope, and goat in house. Emmer & Rye, open on Rainey Street since 2015, works with Zero FoodPrint toward carbon neutrality. Nixta, on East 12th, roasts heirloom corn the day before and grinds it fresh every morning for its own masa.
The twenty-four Selected restaurants
Selected is the largest of Austin’s three tiers and the easiest to overlook. The twenty-four are Apt 115, Birdie’s, Comedor, Discada, Este, Ezov, Fabrik, Garrison, Jeffrey’s, Joe’s Bakery & Coffee Shop, La Condesa, Launderette, Le Calamar, Lenoir, Ling Kitchen, Lutie’s, Maie Day, Mexta, Mum Foods Smokehouse & Delicatessen, Siti, Suerte, Tare, Terry Black’s BBQ, and Toshokan. For ordinary planning this list does more work than either of the other two, because the range runs from a bakery to a steakhouse, and inclusion at all means an inspector ate there and thought it earned a place.
Where Texas stands, and when the next guide arrives
The 2025 Michelin Guide Texas is the current edition, and it carries eighteen one-star restaurants statewide: seven in Austin as published and six today after Olamaie’s closure, five in Houston, three in San Antonio, two in Dallas, and one in Spring. No restaurant in Texas holds two or three stars. Three new stars were added in the 2025 round, all outside Austin, at Isidore and Nicosi in San Antonio and Mamani in Dallas, while Austin gained none and lost none that year. The inaugural Texas guide arrived on November 11, 2024, at 713 Music Hall in Houston, with fifteen stars, two Green Stars, and forty-four Bib Gourmands across the state. The second edition followed on October 28, 2025, at the Wortham Theater Center, also in Houston. Michelin has not announced a 2026 Texas edition, and both reveals so far have landed in the fall, so autumn is when these names move again.
Common questions
- How many Michelin star restaurants are in Austin?
- Six, and all six hold a single star: Barley Swine, Craft Omakase, Hestia, InterStellar BBQ, la Barbecue, and LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue. That is more than any other Texas city, with Houston next at five. The count was seven until Olamaie closed permanently in July 2026.
- Which Austin barbecue restaurants have a Michelin star?
- InterStellar BBQ in north Austin, la Barbecue on East Cesar Chavez, and LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue in south Austin. They are three of only four starred barbecue restaurants in Texas; the fourth is CorkScrew BBQ in Spring, north of Houston. All three sit in Michelin’s second-cheapest price band.
- Is Franklin Barbecue Michelin-starred?
- No. Franklin holds a Bib Gourmand, Michelin’s value distinction, not a star. It is one of five Austin barbecue restaurants in that tier, alongside KG BBQ, Micklethwait Craft Meats, Distant Relatives, and Parish Barbecue.
- What is a Bib Gourmand?
- It is Michelin’s value award, labeled “Good quality, good value cooking,” and it is a distinction in its own right rather than a consolation prize for missing a star. Austin has fifteen of them, more than twice its number of stars. A restaurant holds either a Bib or a star, never both, though a Bib can be paired with a Green Star.
- What should you wear to a Michelin-star restaurant in Austin?
- Less than you would expect. Barley Swine publishes that it has no dress code at all, and half the starred list is barbecue counters where a t-shirt is normal. Only at Hestia does smart casual genuinely earn its keep, and even there a jacket would be overdoing it.
- What is a Michelin Green Star?
- It is Michelin’s separate award for sustainable practice, scored on its own track rather than as a rung on the star ladder. Texas has four of them in total, and three are in Austin: Dai Due, Emmer & Rye, and Nixta Taqueria. The fourth is Isidore in San Antonio.
- What does “Michelin recommended” mean?
- It is not an official Michelin term. Restaurants using it almost always mean they appear in the guide under Selected Restaurants, the third tier for good cooking, below both a Bib Gourmand and a star.
- Does Texas have any 3 Michelin star restaurants?
- No. All eighteen Michelin stars awarded anywhere in Texas are single stars, and the state has never had a two-star or three-star restaurant. Texas has only had a Michelin Guide of its own since November 2024.
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