There are no Michelin-starred restaurants in Kansas, there's a reason for that

(NEXSTAR) – Over 1,500 U.S. restaurants are currently recognized by the Michelin Guide for their cuisine (in some capacity or another), but only 260 of the nation’s top eateries have earned a coveted Michelin star — and less than 50 of those can boast multiple stars.

Most of the restaurants that have earned these honors are concentrated around metro areas in New York and California, though plenty can also be found in Washington D.C., Chicago, Atlanta, and clustered throughout Texas, Florida and Colorado.

You’d have some difficulty, though, trying to find any Michelin-starred restaurants in between. And it’s not because there aren’t excellent restaurants in places like New Orleans, or Portland, or Boston. It’s because Michelin inspectors aren’t really reviewing them for guides.

As of 2025, the Michelin Guides (in the U.S.) only cover cities in seven states and D.C. Michelin always looking to expand, of course, but only after certain standards or criteria are achieved.

“To publish the Michelin Guide [in a specific area], we need first and foremost culinary potential,” Gwendal Poullennec, the international director of the Michelin Guide, told Bon Appetit in 2024. “Today, I have inspectors scouting about 20 destinations where we do not yet have a restaurant selection, but that we are considering for future years. It’s always a several-year process because we must see the openings and the consistency.”

But it’s more than just consistency or “culinary potential” that brings a Michelin Guide to town. In recent years, Michelin has partnered with local and state tourism boards to help fund the creation of a new guide for that area — but only after the inspectors have deemed the local food scene to be worthy.

In 2023, The New York Times reported that California’s tourism board had paid Michelin $600,000 in 2019 to cover the cost of expanding its culinary inspections beyond the Bay Area and Napa Valley. And in 2021, the Miami Herald reported that Florida and its local tourism agencies spent a total of $1.5 million to bring the Guide to its state by 2022.

Colorado’s tourism board (and several of its local tourism agencies, as well as a few resorts) chipped in to bring Michelin’s inspectors to parts of the state in 2023, according to the Times. And Atlanta finally got a Michelin Guide in 2024, after a $1 million payment from the tourism board, an official told NPR the previous year.

It wasn’t always this way. Michelin’s first guide in the U.S. — covering New York City — predated these funding partnerships, as did the first guide covering California’s Bay Area a few years later, according to the Times.

When asked about these newer financial partnerships, Poullennec, speaking with Bon Appetit in 2024, suggested that the Michelin's arrangements with these tourism boards (or, as he called them, “destination marketing organizations” or DMOs) help to defray the editorial expenses involved with producing the guides.

In a statement to Nexstar, the anonymous chief inspector for the North America Michelin Guide also insisted that inspectors show no favoritism to the restaurants of a city or region as a result of these financial arrangements.

“The involvement of DMOs in establishing new Guides does not have any influence on the Inspectors’ judgments regarding the destination assessment, the restaurants in the selection, or award distinctions,” the inspector told Nexstar. “DMO teams have no access to the Inspectors’ work or the final selection until the list of selected restaurants is revealed by the MICHELIN Guide.”

Michelin’s inspector also suggested that a financial partnership with DMOs isn’t always a necessity when Michelin chooses a new destination to cover, though that hasn’t been the case with several of the most recent U.S. guides. (Tourism boards in Texas also agreed to pay a combined $2.7 million to help fund the state’s guide in 2024, according to the Fort Worth Report.)

There are, however, some tourism officials who refuse to buy into the Michelin Guide. Representatives from MeetBoston confirmed to Eater that they met with Michelin to discuss a Boston Guide in 2022, but declined the opportunity when they were informed they’d have to pay for the privilege.

That arrangement didn’t make “sense” for MeetBoston, CEO Martha Sheridan told the outlet. Her team also cited the guide’s predilection toward fine-dining establishments and specific cuisines as additional reasons why MeetBoston couldn’t justify the partnership. (The Michelin Guide has long been criticized for appearing to favor French or Japanese cuisine, as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have documented in previous years.)

Kyle Hight, a hospitality professor who worked at Georgia State University in 2024, said the introduction of Michelin’s Atlanta Guide might also prompt local chefs to strive to copy some of the techniques used at Michelin-starred restaurants.

“It's probably going to be smaller portion sizes,” he told NPR that year. “It's probably going to be artfully presented.”

Some of the restaurateurs who run Michelin-starred eateries, meanwhile, might say the financial investments yield greater benefits for local tourism — as well as a boost for their own businesses and reputations, of course.

“It doesn't get better than that. It's great,” Johnny Curiel, the chef and owner of Denver’s Alma Fonda Fina, told City Cast of getting a Michelin star in 2024.

“Getting a reservation for the restaurant was already three or four weeks out,” Curiel added. “But in a matter of two days, we are completely booked up for the next 60 days.”