Is There a Michelin Curse? Ask Audrey.

The East Nashville restaurant will serve its last dinner less than a year after Michelin put it in the guide.

By Eric Barton
6:05 a.m. ET, Aug. 4, 2026

AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.

Audrey will serve its last dinner Aug. 16, ending a five-year experiment in East Nashville that at various points involved potatoes served in a kudzu basket, a laboratory for extracting essential oils and live terpenes, cornbread tested 100 times, and, last fall, a recommendation from Michelin.

Chef Sam Jett has blamed sluggish restaurant sales these days in Nashville, something that’s not uncommon elsewhere as rising prices push diners more to counter-service restaurants than fine dining. But the reality is that Audrey is another casualty that, at this point, has become a trend in the restaurant industry: the curse of landing in the Michelin Guide.

Chef Sam Jett and his team

Sean Brock opened Audrey in 2021 and named it for his grandmother. The even more elaborate tasting counter upstairs, June—named for his other grandmother—closed in 2024. Brock stepped away from the chef role last year, when Southall Farm & Inn took over operations and installed Sam Jett as executive chef.

By then, Jett had spent six years running Audrey’s operations. The Tennessee native had been there for the 2013 opening of Husk Nashville and later spent two years as chef de cuisine at Ashley Christensen’s Death & Taxes in Raleigh before returning to Brock’s restaurant group.

When I interviewed Jett last year, he talked about rolling biscuits and frying pork tenderloin in his grandmother’s Jefferson County kitchen, the kind of food that would become his compass at Audrey. “It isn’t just Appalachian-inspired anymore,” he said. “We are serving Appalachian food.”

The 100-tries cornbread

Audrey kept searching for ways to convince Nashville to come eat it. The restaurant began as tasting-menu-only, later added a la carte service, lunch, and brunch, even a burger. Eventually it began advertising $5 food and drinks upstairs. Jett had seen the warning signs before learning the restaurant would close. “The reality of it is, restaurants in Nashville, it’s an extreme downward trend,” he told the Nashville Business Journal.

Audrey’s burger

Audrey’s biscuit with jam

Landing in Michelin’s inaugural guide to the American South might have initially seemed like a lifeline for Audrey. But chefs have told me the guide’s recognition can come with a dark cloud. Sure, Michelin recognition initially can lead to an increase in business. But it also brings a crowd with unreasonably high expectations. Tampa chef Bryce Bonsack told me once that after he landed a Michelin star, he’d find online complaints about his restaurant Rocca not being up to Michelin standards, even though Michelin standards are never something he aspired to.

Audrey is far from alone in closing not long after getting Michelin’s attention. Olamaie in Austin closed July 19 after more than a decade in business and less than two years after earning one of Texas’ first Michelin stars; chef-owner Michael Fojtasek said the initial rush of Michelin business faded after several months. Washington lost two starred restaurants: Reverie in October, after surviving a fire and an 18-month rebuild, and Tail Up Goat in December, as its labor-heavy model became too difficult to sustain. Brooklyn’s Clover Hill, which lost the chef who led it to a star, closed in October.

Jett

Michelin brings headlines and, at least for a while, reservations. But the restaurant business also needs them to show up on Tuesday.

That may be the Michelin curse. Customers start seeing restaurants that land in the guide as aspirational places, destinations for birthdays and graduations, not weeknights. No matter how many tries it took to get the cornbread right.