RESTAURANT NEWS | THE SOUTH
Michelin's Southern Map Just Got Wider
Year two of the American South guide spread out: three new stars, a first nod for Wilmington, and not a single star lost.
By Eric Barton
9:58 p.m. ET, Oct. 21, 2026
A Dopo
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.
The second Michelin Guide American South, revealed Wednesday night at The Pinnacle in Nashville, grew in every direction at once. The selection now runs to 265 restaurants across 44 cuisines, up from 228 in last year's inaugural edition. Three restaurants earned a first star, 14 joined the Bib Gourmand ranks, and 31 more were added as Recommended. The more telling number may be zero: not one of last year's starred restaurants lost its star.
Year one of this guide was about planting flags in the South's established dining cities. Year two is about the edges. The night's most striking star went to a restaurant that serves the public two nights a week in Gay, Georgia, a town most Georgians would struggle to find on a map. The inspectors are clearly driving well past the interstates now, and the region's most ambitious cooking keeps turning up in its smallest towns.
Rivayat Creative Indian
Uberto Restaurant sits amid rolling hills at the World of Quercus resort in Gay, about an hour south of Atlanta, and opens to non-guests on Friday and Saturday evenings only. Chef Ryan Smith's tasting menu is built on the resort's regenerative farm, which supplies more than 90 percent of the produce. The inspectors singled out a miso and Alabama blue crab chawanmushi and cold-smoked, dry-aged Rohan duck grilled over binchotan coals. Smith appeared again later in the evening in Michelin's new Mindful Voices series, recognized for the farm itself.
The other headline star went to Dakar NOLA in New Orleans, where chef Serigne Mbaye cooks the food of his native Senegal through a local lens: jollof rice fired with habanero beside grilled fish in tamarind broth, Gulf crab with black-eyed peas and cassava, a shrimp and okra soup. It's a few tables in a cottage, and it gives the guide its first Senegalese star.
Atlanta's metro count, meanwhile, goes from eight stars to nine. So. Fox, a small, light-filled restaurant in Virginia-Highland, took the area's newest star on chef Myles Moody's seasonal Southern cooking and sommelier Rachael Pack's wine program. The name nods to the Southern fox grape, another name for the muscadine, and wine runs a close second to food here; the inspectors' highlight was corn dumplings in a sweet corn sauce with lump crab. Atlas, Bacchanalia, Hayakawa, Lazy Betty, Mujō, O by Brush, and Omakase Table all held their stars, as did Spring, just up the road in Marietta.
Tipsy Thaiger
In the ceremony's hometown, the story was stability. Bastion, Locust, and The Catbird Seat all kept their stars. The promotion question that has followed two Nashville restaurants since last year got the same answer: Kisser and Peninsula remain Bib Gourmands. Nashville did add a Bib at Maiz De La Vida, plus Recommended newcomers that include 5th & Taylor and Present Tense.
Miscellanea Spirit House
So. Fox
Charleston held all three of its stars (Malagón, Vern's, and Wild Common) and added two Bib Gourmands, Palmira and Rivayat. Charlotte's Counter kept its star, and the city's Bib list gained The Story of “Mi Cariño,” whose chef, Héctor González-Mora, also won the Young Chef award. Sam Diminich of Charlotte's Restaurant Constance was the evening's other Mindful Voices feature, for sourcing from more than 30 farms within 50 miles.
And then there's Wilmington, the night's happiest footnote. Shut out entirely in 2025, the North Carolina port city placed two restaurants on the Recommended list, manna and Salita Pizza, and manna's William Mellon won the Sommelier Award. First recognition is the hardest to earn in a guide like this. Wilmington has its foothold now.
Maiz De La Vida
Asheville will wait another year for its first star. Its delegation held exactly: 15 restaurants recognized again, with Luminosa, Little Chango, and Mother keeping their Bib Gourmands and the same dozen Recommended names behind them.
The Bib Gourmand list, the part of the guide most travelers actually eat from, grew to 59 with 14 additions, among them A Dopo in Knoxville, Bao Toan in Memphis, Ideal's in Durham, and Okàn in Bluffton. Oxford, Mississippi, had a night out of proportion to its size: Miscellanea Spirit House earned a Bib, and its Ally Bowen won the Exceptional Cocktails Award. The service award went to Jared Patterson of Little Betty Steak Bar in Mountain Brook, Alabama.
Héctor González-Mora
The night had a people program too. Michelin handed out four special awards: Exceptional Cocktails to Ally Bowen of Miscellanea Spirit House in Oxford, the Sommelier Award to William Mellon of manna in Wilmington, Outstanding Service to Jared Patterson of Little Betty Steak Bar in Mountain Brook, Alabama, and the Young Chef award to Héctor González-Mora of The Story of “Mi Cariño” in Charlotte. Between them, the four work in a spirit house, a first-year-in-the-guide dining room, a steak bar, and a Bib Gourmand kitchen, which is about as good a cross-section of Southern hospitality as the guide could have drawn.
Two years in, the American South guide no longer reads as an experiment. The top held firm everywhere, no demotions and no drama among the holdovers, while the inspectors pushed the map outward, into farm country in Georgia, a port city in North Carolina, and a college town in Mississippi. The South's restaurant story was always bigger than its big cities. The guide is starting to show it.
Michelin Guide American South 2026: The New Restaurants
New One MICHELIN Star
Dakar NOLA — New Orleans, Louisiana
So. Fox — Atlanta, Georgia
Uberto Restaurant — Gay, Georgia
New Bib Gourmand
A Dopo — Knoxville, Tennessee
Ajja — Raleigh, North Carolina
Bao Toan Kitchen & Bar — Memphis, Tennessee
Ideal's — Durham, North Carolina
Maiz De La Vida — Nashville, Tennessee
Miscellanea Spirit House — Oxford, Mississippi
Okàn — Bluffton, South Carolina
Palmira — Charleston, South Carolina
Rivayat — Charleston, South Carolina
Safta's Table — New Orleans, Louisiana
Summerland — Atlanta, Georgia
Tesoro — Carrboro, North Carolina
The Story of "Mi Cariño" — Charlotte, North Carolina
Tipsy Thaiger — Roswell, Georgia
New Recommended
2nd — Chattanooga, Tennessee
5th & Taylor — Nashville, Tennessee
Albertine — Charlotte, North Carolina
Au Bon Coin — Knoxville, Tennessee
Austin Whereabouts — Bessemer, Alabama
Cane Pazzo — Hanahan, South Carolina
Casimiro — New Orleans, Louisiana
Evviva — New Orleans, Louisiana
Fawn — Memphis, Tennessee
Feliciana Bistrôt and Bar — Covington, Louisiana
Jewel of the South — New Orleans, Louisiana
Junior — Nashville, Tennessee
Little Betty Steak Bar — Mountain Brook, Alabama
Locanda Brasato — Mountain Brook, Alabama
L'Ostrica — Charlotte, North Carolina
Manna — Wilmington, North Carolina
Maringouin — Ocean Springs, Mississippi
Merci — Charleston, South Carolina
Native Fine Diner — Greenville, North Carolina
Pink Lotus — Atlanta, Georgia
Poppy Pies — Jackson, Mississippi
Present Tense — Nashville, Tennessee
Pump Social — Concord, North Carolina
Radici Italian Chophouse — Bluffton, South Carolina
Raven Steakhouse — Maryville, Tennessee
Saint Claire — New Orleans, Louisiana
Salita Pizza — Wilmington, North Carolina
Spaghett — Charlotte, North Carolina
Spring 2nd Branch — Marietta, Georgia
The Crustacean Club — New Orleans, Louisiana
Wilder at Windy Hill Farm & Preserve — Loudon, Tennessee
Special Awards
Exceptional Cocktails Award — Ally Bowen, Miscellanea Spirit House (Oxford, Mississippi)
Sommelier Award — William Mellon, Manna (Wilmington, North Carolina)
Outstanding Service Award — Jared Patterson, Little Betty Steak Bar (Mountain Brook, Alabama)
Young Chef Award — Héctor González-Mora, The Story of "Mi Cariño" (Charlotte, North Carolina)
