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Why Does the Michelin Guide Hate Italian-American Restaurants?
Michelin has handed out more than 250 stars in this country. None of those restaurants serve spaghetti and meatballs.
By Eric Barton | March 19, 2025
Carbone opened its Miami Beach location at the start of 2021, and it was an impossible-to-get reservation even before The New Yorker wrote about how hard it was to get in.
So when I sat down at a table outside with a group of friends in April of that year, it seemed like a huge triumph. I had called in a favor, and so there we were, the six of us, ordering dirty martinis and wine the color of overripe plums.
Soon, our oversized-bow-tie-wearing waiter was filling the table with colorful nonna plates: tableside Caesar with croutons the size of Rubik’s cubes, breadcrumb-topped baked clams, lobster fra diavolo, and the dish that’s debated endlessly on the internet, the spicy rigatoni. A lot of people like to hate on Carbone for being too expensive, but, like each dish I’ve had there, everything was very good, sometimes downright terrific.
But you wouldn’t think so reading the Michelin Guide. In 2014, the guide gave Carbone in New York City a coveted star, only to take it away in 2022. Now, there are no traditional Italian-American red sauce restaurants with a Michelin Star.
Which got me wondering: Why does Michelin hate Italian-American cuisine?
The spicy rigatoni from Carbone Vino
First, consider just how prevalent these restaurants are in this country. There are nearly 60,000 Italian restaurants in the United States, a number that’s still on the rise. Those restaurants employ a million people and bring in almost $95 billion in revenue--about as much as Bank of America.
While nobody keeps track of how many of those restaurants serve American-style recipes, it’s fair to say it’s most of them. They’re everywhere: from the mom and pop place at your nearest strip mall to Gibsons Italia in Chicago, one of the country’s highest-grossing independent restaurants.
But you wouldn’t know it from looking at the Michelin Guide for this country. The guide has 26 restaurants listed as Italian-American. Of them, 16 are listed as “recommended” and seven have Bib Gourmands. Just one has a Michelin Star. And like most of the restaurants in the Italian-American section of the guide, it’s not a traditional Italian-American restaurant. Which means that there’s not a single red sauce Italian-American restaurant with a Michelin Star.
I reached out to the folks who run the Michelin Guide to get their take. A spokesperson emailed a response attributed to “the anonymous Chief Inspector for the MICHELIN Guide North America.”
The response reads in part, “The famously anonymous inspectors only evaluate the food on the plate when discerning if a restaurant is worthy of inclusion in the Guide. The inspection team is always looking for hidden gems, with great curiosity and open-mindedness. They don’t focus on any one cuisine over another but rather on the diversity of cuisines available in each destination.”
But a guide as esteemed as Michelin just simply shouldn’t skip a cuisine that has defined this country’s culinary history. In my family, there’s a story that’s often told about how my grandfather, of English heritage, won over my grandmother’s Italian-born parents by raving about the spaghetti they served him. My grandmother’s braciole, lasagna, and spaghetti and meatballs would go on to define every holiday, every special occasion.
Even for those without Italian in their blood, the dishes of red sauce joints are what many Americans define as a night out. It’s celebratory food. It’s Tuesday night half-off bottles of wine. It’s takeout that comes in tinfoil trays with paper tops. It’s the crisp edges of a parmesan and the melty mozz atop a baked ziti.
Chicken Parm at Gibsons Italia
That single Italian-American restaurant with a star? It’s Torrisi in New York, coincidentally a sister restaurant to Carbone. Pete Wells gave Torrisi three stars in his review for The New York Times, but it’s not a traditional Italian-American restaurant. Torrisi’s clams appetizer, for instance, is served on an English muffin, which, according to Wells, evokes the memory of after-school toaster-oven pizzas. Even listing it as Italian-American seems to indicate the Michelin inspectors do not understand the definition of Italian-American cooking, generally defined by dishes invented in this country, including spaghetti and meatballs, penne alla vodka, and chicken parmesan.
Look, the Michelin Guide deserves respect. Unlike the James Beard Awards, with its issues of fairness, the Michelin Guide’s anonymous inspectors produce results that appear, at least to me, unbiased and well researched. Michelin’s list of Miami restaurants, for instance, isn’t far off from my own list of the city’s best.
But if they’re truly going to be a source of information on the finest restaurants in the United States, it’s time for the Michelin Guide to start handing out stars to Italian-American restaurants. Otherwise, we should revoke the inspectors’ rights to chicken parm, garlic knots, and a Sunday gravy that’s been simmering since dawn.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who spits his time between Asheville and Miami. He’s on a constant hunt for the best pizza, best places to bike, and for his next new favorite destination. Email him here.
