Michelin Texas 2026: Three New Stars, None in Houston

The 2026 Michelin Guide Texas, unveiled on October 8, added three names to the starred ranks and left the state's map looking different. Fabrik in Austin and Goldee's Bar-B-Q in Fort Worth were promoted to one star. Kappo Kappo, also in Austin, entered the guide with one star at its first attempt. Texas now counts 19 starred restaurants, every one of them at one star, with no two-star or three-star room in the state.

The full selection runs to 149 restaurants across 30 cuisine types. Six restaurants joined the Bib Gourmand category, which rewards good cooking at a fair price, and 16 more joined as recommended. Across the guide, 54 restaurants hold a Bib Gourmand and 76 sit on the recommended list. It is the third Texas selection since the guide arrived in the state in 2024, and the spread of the new stars is the story: a plant-based tasting menu, a French and Japanese counter, and a barbecue joint that opens four days a week.

Fabrik: plants as the main event

Fabrik is the clearest statement of intent. Chef Je Wallerstein and her husband Silas opened the restaurant in 2023, and it has since moved to a new home in Tarrytown. The cooking is entirely plant-based, built on produce from Texas farms, and the inspectors singled out mushrooms, beets and corn treated as main events rather than substitutes. They also pointed readers to the biodynamic wine pairing, describing it as fairly priced alongside the menu itself.

The current listing gives a sense of the room's scale and ambition. Fabrik's autumn tasting is listed at 105 dollars per person, with an optional wine pairing at 65 dollars, and the menu is described as 100 percent plant-based, low impact and sustainability focused, drawing on Japanese, Nordic and Italian traditions. A star for a restaurant of this kind, in Texas of all places, would have been hard to predict a decade ago. Michelin is rewarding a kitchen that never imitates meat and dairy dishes, and instead builds its case from vegetables outward.

Goldee’s: brisket, post oak and a long line

Goldee's Bar-B-Q, at 4645 Dick Price Road in Fort Worth, works at the opposite end of the format spectrum. It opens Thursday through Sunday, from 11 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon or until it sells out, and its own site advises arriving between 8 and 10 in the morning to be sure of the full menu. The inspectors called it the name on the lips of every barbecue aficionado seeking great brisket in the Fort Worth area, and judged the hours-long wait worth it.

The centre of the tray is Black Angus brisket cooked low and slow over local post oak. Around it, the inspectors praised juicy turkey, a jalapeno cheddar sausage with pockets of Tillamook cheese, old-school potato salad, brisket-studded beans and banana pudding finished with house-made vanilla wafer crumbles. The restaurant's own menu prices sliced brisket at 42 dollars a pound, with pork spare ribs at 34 dollars and smoked turkey at 32 dollars. Barbecue now holds four of Texas's stars, a concentration no other American guide city matches in quite the same way.

Kappo Kappo: 25 seats at the Austin Proper

Kappo Kappo is the newcomer. Twin brothers Haru and Gohei Kishi, born in Paris to Japanese parents, cook inside the Austin Proper Hotel in a single room of 25 seats, 15 of them at the chef's counter. Kappo means cut and cook: each course is prepared in front of the guest and served directly by the chef. The tasting runs to 11 courses, eight savoury and three desserts, and the inspectors described a lively room rather than a hushed one.

The meal opens with a gougere filled with nori emulsion and topped with A5 wagyu, toro tartare and caviar, a first bite that states the restaurant's French and Japanese terms in one mouthful. The room itself, designed by Kelly Wearstler, is clad in charred cypress and built around that counter, so the cooking is the view. For Austin, which now holds seven starred restaurants, Kappo Kappo adds a hotel dining room that behaves like a small counter restaurant, intimate by design rather than by accident.

Houston keeps its stars and takes the Bibs

Houston, the state's largest dining city, gained no new star. All six of its starred restaurants retained one star: BCN Taste and Tradition, CorkScrew BBQ in Spring, Le Jardinier, March, Musaafer and Tatemo. What Houston took instead was depth. Five of the six new Bib Gourmands are in the city: Bar Buena, Khoi Barbecue, Kitchen Rumors, Murray's Pizza and Wine, and Xolo, with Dallas restaurant Resident Taqueria completing the six.

Houston also collected individual honours. Jessica Cano of Sushi Horiuchi, a new entry on the recommended list, received the guide's Sommelier Award. Angel Bautista of Xolo received the Exceptional Cocktails Award. In Austin, Stefan Davis, general manager and sommelier at Barley Swine, received the Outstanding Service Award. The pattern is worth noting: in a year when the headline stars went elsewhere, Houston's recognition ran through value, drinks and service, the parts of a restaurant that regulars actually live with.

The question over 2027

One uncertainty hangs over the celebration. This selection marks the final year of Michelin's original three-year agreement with Texas and local tourism agencies, an arrangement reported at 2.7 million dollars. Whether the guide returns to Texas in 2027, and on what terms, remains unclear. For the 19 starred kitchens, and for a state that has built real momentum in three short years, the next announcement that matters may not be a star at all. It may be whether there is a Texas guide to award one.