Michelin-star restaurants in Austin.
Austin has seven Michelin-starred restaurants in the 2026 Michelin Guide Texas, announced on October 8, 2026, and all seven hold exactly one star: Barley Swine, Craft Omakase, Fabrik, Hestia, InterStellar BBQ, Kappo Kappo, and LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue. That is the most of any city in Texas, ahead of Houston’s five. Two of the seven are new. Fabrik, the plant-based tasting room in Tarrytown, was promoted from the guide’s Recommended tier, and Kappo Kappo, a French-Japanese counter inside the Austin Proper Hotel, entered the guide with a star. Two names left the star list. la Barbecue lost its star and stays in the guide as a Recommended restaurant, and Olamaie closed on Sunday, July 19, 2026, after twelve years. Beyond the stars, Michelin’s Austin listing runs to fifteen Bib Gourmands and twenty-three Recommended restaurants, forty-five entries in all. Below, each starred room in detail, then what a seat costs, how far ahead to book, what to wear, and what Michelin’s distinctions mean now that the Green Star is being retired.
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The seven starred restaurants right now
Seven 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, Fabrik in the Tarrytown Shopping Center, Hestia and Kappo Kappo downtown on West Third and West Second, InterStellar BBQ off RR 620 in north Austin, and LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue in south Austin. Five of the seven, Barley Swine, Craft Omakase, Hestia, InterStellar, and LeRoy and Lewis, have held the star since the Texas guide’s 2024 debut. Fabrik and Kappo Kappo are the 2026 additions, two of only three new stars in the whole state this year; the third went to Goldee’s in Fort Worth. The two departures happened for different reasons. Olamaie served its last dinner on Sunday, July 19, 2026, while la Barbecue, a starred pit in 2024 and 2025, is still open and still in the guide, now as a Recommended restaurant.
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. Valet runs at Third and Nueces on Friday and Saturday nights, and the restaurant validates parking at the Third and Shoal garage after 5pm. 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 plus a 20 percent gratuity, which the booking page totals at 222 dollars a head before tax. None of that is refundable, though a booking can be moved up to 48 hours out. Seats are released in timed batches rather than on a rolling window, parties larger than six are declined at the communal seatings, and a group can book the whole twelve-seat room instead. 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, no working around a seaweed, soy, rice, or fin fish allergy, and no seat for anyone who cannot eat raw fish.
Craft Omakase→Barley Swine
Bryce Gilmore’s tasting room sits at 6555 Burnet Road, and at 125 dollars a person it is the second-cheapest starred tasting menu in the city, behind only Fabrik. The price rises to 150 dollars for the Formula 1 weekend, October 22 to 25. A traditional beverage pairing runs 75 to 85 dollars and a premier pairing about 135 to 145, and a 20 percent gratuity goes on every dine-in check, so add roughly 25 dollars a head to the food alone. The fall menu runs eight courses, from cured tuna crudo and a chilled pear soup through chipotle yellowtail and smoked pork shoulder to an Akaushi ribeye dry-aged for more than 30 days, with Black River caviar and a smoked Akaushi beef rib among the 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. Valet is complimentary. 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. The front of house has its own trophy now: general manager Stefan Davis won Michelin’s 2026 Texas Service Award. Gilmore’s sister restaurant is Odd Duck, which turns up in the Bib Gourmand list further down this page.
Barley Swine→Fabrik
Fabrik is the only plant-based restaurant on Austin’s star list, promoted in 2026 from the guide’s Recommended tier. Chef Je Wallerstein runs the kitchen and her husband, Silas Wallerstein, runs the room, a small space in the Tarrytown Shopping Center at 3108 Windsor Road with parking on Windsor and behind the center. Everything is vegan, down to the wine. The tasting menu posted on its site is 105 dollars a person, with an optional 65-dollar pairing of organic, biodynamic, and minimal-intervention wines that works out to about three glasses, and Michelin’s inspectors called the pairing as fairly priced as the food. They also singled out mushrooms, beets, and corn as main events, and the posted summer menu builds to a mushroom cappelletti with corn cream, maitake, and cornbread madeleines. Dinner runs Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 5:45 to 10:30pm, by reservation only through OpenTable, which takes parties of up to six, with a waitlist for full nights. Read the house rules before you book: a 20 percent gratuity on parties of five or more, a 50-dollar-a-head fee for cancelling inside 48 hours, no guests under twelve, the whole table on the tasting, cards only, and little room for a nut or soy allergy (text them first about a single specific nut), though a fully gluten-free menu is possible with notice. Plan on up to two and a half hours.
Fabrik→Kappo Kappo
Kappo Kappo entered the Michelin Guide this year with a star, a French-Japanese chef’s counter inside the Austin Proper Hotel at 600 West Second Street, in a room designed by Kelly Wearstler. Twin brothers Haru and Gohei Kishi, born in Paris to Japanese parents, cook an omakase that changes nightly and is never published, and Michelin is clear that this is not a hushed counter: the brothers share stories about their lives and their dishes as they go. In Michelin’s write-up the meal opens with a single bite, a gougère filled with nori emulsion and topped with A5 wagyu and toro tartare and a spoonful of Ostera caviar, then moves through chawanmushi and sashimi to a bento box that includes a Texas grapefruit terrine. The price is 195 dollars a person, with tax and a 20 percent service charge added on top, and sake and wine pairings can be added ahead of time or at the table. There are fifteen counter seats and ten table seats, and Michelin says the L-shaped counter is the one to book. Seatings run Tuesday through Thursday at 6:00 and 8:15pm and Friday and Saturday at 5:00, 7:15, and 9:30pm, booked on OpenTable, and the meal takes about two hours. The restaurant has also added a petit tasting menu on Wednesdays. It needs 48 hours’ notice to cancel, makes no dietary substitutions, and does not admit children under twelve. Valet at the hotel’s Second Street entrance is 27 dollars for up to three hours.
Kappo Kappo→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 sausages that include 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→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 two of the four starred barbecue restaurants in Texas are in Austin
Michelin awarded nineteen one-star ratings across Texas in the 2026 guide, and four of them went to barbecue. Two of those four are here, InterStellar BBQ and LeRoy and Lewis. The other two are CorkScrew BBQ in Spring, north of Houston, and Goldee’s in Fort Worth, which was promoted from a Bib Gourmand this year. Austin held three of the four in 2025, and the difference is la Barbecue, which kept its place in the guide but moved down to Recommended. What makes even two starred pits odd is that barbecue almost always lands in the guide’s value tiers, and Austin’s own entries show the pattern plainly. Michelin files six Austin Bib Gourmands under barbecue: Franklin Barbecue, KG BBQ, Micklethwait Craft Meats, Distant Relatives, Parish Barbecue, and Briscuits. la Barbecue, Terry Black’s, and Mum Foods sit a tier below that, in Recommended, alongside Din Ho, the north Austin Cantonese barbecue house that joined the guide this year. Barbecue runs through all three Austin tiers, and inspectors pushed it into the top one twice.
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 five tasting menus quote their prices on different bases, so they are worth lining up carefully. Fabrik is the least expensive at 105 dollars a person before drinks, tax, and tip, with a 20 percent gratuity added only for parties of five or more. Barley Swine is 125 plus its automatic 20 percent. Craft Omakase is 185 plus a 20 percent gratuity, prepaid at 222 a head before tax. Kappo Kappo is 195 with tax and a 20 percent service charge on top. Hestia is 215 before drinks, tax, and tip. Michelin files all five in its top price band, the one it labels “Spare no expense.” The two 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 still 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 two new stars both book on OpenTable and both want 48 hours’ notice to cancel. Kappo Kappo runs fixed seatings for twenty-five seats, two a night midweek and three on Friday and Saturday, and Fabrik charges 50 dollars a head for a late cancellation and keeps a waitlist for full nights. The barbecue pair run on a different clock, where timing beats booking. InterStellar sells until the meat is gone, which can happen well before the posted 4pm close, and LeRoy and Lewis stays open into the evening every day but Tuesday.
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. Fabrik also says it has no dress code, whether that means a t-shirt and jeans or a tuxedo. That is a fair baseline for the whole list. Kappo Kappo’s own FAQ names a dress code, smart casual, and smart casual reads right at Hestia too, a collared shirt or a dress, though 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 two barbecue counters, nobody will look twice at a t-shirt.
What the star, the Bib Gourmand, Recommended, and the Green Star actually mean
Michelin’s ladder has three rungs, and only the top one 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.” Recommended restaurants, a tier Michelin’s website still files as Selected, are 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 used to sit outside that ladder and honor sustainable practice, so a restaurant could hold one alongside a star, a Bib, or neither. Michelin announced in May 2026 that it is phasing the Green Star out in favor of Mindful Voices, an editorial series about the people behind a restaurant rather than an award, and the 2026 Texas guide lists no Green Stars at all.
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. All fifteen held the distinction before the 2026 reveal, and none of the six new Bibs awarded statewide this year landed in Austin: five went to Houston and one to Dallas. Mercado Sin Nombre and Parish Barbecue remain the city’s most recent additions, from the 2025 guide. 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. Nixta and Cuantos Tacos both land near the top of our ranking of Austin tacos.
Mindful Voices, which replaces the Green Star
Dai Due, Emmer & Rye, and Nixta Taqueria held Austin’s three Green Stars, Michelin’s old sustainability award. Dai Due and Emmer & Rye were recognized at the 2024 debut, and Nixta earned its first in 2025. With the Green Star being retired, all three now carry Michelin’s Mindful Voices label instead, which profiles the people behind a restaurant rather than scoring it. Five restaurants in the 2026 Texas guide carry it, and these three are the Austin ones. All three are also Bib Gourmands, a reminder that the Green Star was always scored on its own track. Michelin’s pages for the three spell out the practice. Dai Due sources nearly everything from inside Texas, from meat and produce to oils and dairy, and you walk in through its working butcher shop. Emmer & Rye builds its menu around farms like Trosi Farms, which practices no-till farming, and it buys heritage grain from Barton Springs Mill and only whole animals and fish. Nixta roasts heirloom corn the day before and grinds it every morning for its masa, with 5,000 square feet of its own gardens growing for the restaurant and for local community fridges.
The twenty-three Recommended restaurants
Recommended is the largest of Austin’s three tiers and the easiest to overlook. The twenty-three are Apt 115, Birdie’s, Comedor, Din Ho Chinese BBQ, Discada, Este, Ezov, Jeffrey’s, Joe’s Bakery & Coffee Shop, la Barbecue, La Condesa, Launderette, Le Calamar, Lenoir, Ling Kitchen, Lutie’s, Mexta, Mum Foods Smokehouse & Delicatessen, Siti, Suerte, Tare, Terry Black’s BBQ, and Toshokan. Din Ho, a Cantonese barbecue house on Research Boulevard known for roast duck and char siu for three decades, is the only newcomer. la Barbecue arrives from the star list, Fabrik left the tier for a star, and Garrison and Maie Day, both listed before the reveal, are not in the 2026 selection. 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 2026 Michelin Guide Texas is the current edition, revealed on October 8, 2026, by press release rather than at a ceremony. It lists 149 restaurants statewide: nineteen one-star restaurants, fifty-four Bib Gourmands, and seventy-six Recommended. The stars split seven in Austin, five in Houston, three in San Antonio, two in Dallas, and one each in Fort Worth and Spring, and no restaurant in Texas holds two or three stars. Austin was the only city to lose a star this year, after Olamaie’s closure and la Barbecue’s move to Recommended, and it was also the only city besides Fort Worth to gain one. Barley Swine’s Stefan Davis took the Service Award, the only one of the year’s four special awards to go outside Houston, where the sommelier, young chef, and cocktail awards all landed. 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, with eighteen stars. All three 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?
- Seven, and all seven hold a single star: Barley Swine, Craft Omakase, Fabrik, Hestia, InterStellar BBQ, Kappo Kappo, and LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue. That is more than any other Texas city, with Houston next at five. Fabrik and Kappo Kappo are new in the 2026 guide, la Barbecue lost its star and is now Recommended, and Olamaie closed in July 2026.
- Which Austin restaurants are new or promoted in the 2026 Michelin Guide?
- Kappo Kappo, the French-Japanese counter inside the Austin Proper Hotel, entered the guide with a star, and Fabrik, the plant-based tasting room in Tarrytown, was promoted to a star from Recommended. Din Ho Chinese BBQ on Research Boulevard joined as a Recommended restaurant. None of the six new Bib Gourmands in Texas this year went to Austin.
- Which Austin barbecue restaurants have a Michelin star?
- InterStellar BBQ in north Austin and LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue in south Austin. They are two of four starred barbecue restaurants in Texas; the others are CorkScrew BBQ in Spring and Goldee’s in Fort Worth. la Barbecue held a star in 2024 and 2025 and is now a Recommended restaurant. Both starred Austin pits 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 six Austin Bib Gourmands that Michelin files under barbecue, alongside KG BBQ, Micklethwait Craft Meats, Distant Relatives, Parish Barbecue, and Briscuits.
- 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.
- What should you wear to a Michelin-star restaurant in Austin?
- Less than you would expect. Barley Swine and Fabrik both publish that they have no dress code at all, and two of the seven starred restaurants are barbecue counters where a t-shirt is normal. Kappo Kappo asks for smart casual, Hestia reads the same, and even there a jacket would be overdoing it.
- What is a Michelin Green Star?
- It was Michelin’s separate award for sustainable practice, scored on its own track rather than as a rung on the star ladder. Michelin announced in May 2026 that it is phasing the Green Star out in favor of Mindful Voices, an editorial series about the people behind a restaurant, and the 2026 Texas guide lists no Green Stars. Austin’s three former holders, Dai Due, Emmer & Rye, and Nixta Taqueria, now carry the Mindful Voices label.
- What does “Michelin recommended” mean?
- It is the guide’s third tier, restaurants an inspector rated “Good cooking” without awarding a Bib Gourmand or a star. Michelin’s 2026 Texas announcement counts them as Recommended restaurants, while its website still files the same tier under Selected. Austin has twenty-three of them.
- Does Texas have any 3 Michelin star restaurants?
- No. All nineteen Michelin stars in the 2026 Texas guide 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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