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Fact check: Most US states are not covered by the Michelin guide

A recent addition of Texas to the US states where Michelin publishes a guide takes the total to eight in the US.

August Graham

Wednesday 21 August 2024 14:46 BST

Behind in Hackney, east London, is one of the UK’s 185 Michelin starred restaurants. (Yui Mok/PA) (PA Archive)

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A widely-shared online post claimed there are more than four times as many Michelin-starred restaurants in the UK as in the US when counting per capita.

It also said that “43 out of the 50 US states combined have fewer Michelin star restaurants than Nottingham”.

Evaluation

While it is accurate to say that the UK has around four times more Michelin-starred restaurants per capita as the US, it is misleading to compare Nottingham to 43 US states.

This is because Michelin only awards stars in eight US states, it does not assess any restaurants outside those states.

The facts

According to the CIA World Factbook the US has a population of 341,963,408, while the UK has a population of 68,459,055.

A search for Michelin-starred restaurants in the US on the guide’s website reveals 235 results, while in the UK the same search produces 185 results.

That would imply that for every one million people in the US there are around 0.7 restaurants with one or more Michelin stars. The equivalent in the UK is around 2.7 restaurants per one million people.

This more or less supports the post’s claim, although the poster says “over four times” while this result produces just under four times as many. But that could be explained by slightly different population data or rounding differences.

But the Michelin guide does not cover most states in the US. In July Michelin announced that it was going to launch in Texas, covering five cities in the state.

That means that Michelin now has guides for eight separate locations in the US. Most of these are just cities rather than whole states.

The locations are New York; Washington DC; Chicago; California; Miami/Orlando/Tampa in Florida; Colorado; Atlanta; and Austin/Dallas/Fort Worth/Houston/San Antonio in Texas.

The Texas guide has not yet been published. That means that at the moment there are only seven states where stars have been awarded in the US.

Nottingham has two Michelin-starred restaurants. That is more than the combined total of 43 US states, but Michelin has not published any assessments of restaurants in those 43 states.