Diners can spend a pretty penny at some Michelin-starred restaurants. But cities and states themselves put down a good deal of cash to get a Michelin Guide in the first place.
The French tire company recently announced that it’s bringing its famous red book to Texas, and Houston’s tourism department is shelling out $270,000 to make that happen, Eater Houston reported on Monday. Houston First is paying $90,000 a year over three years, even redirecting some of its budget from other priorities to help fund the Michelin Guide, Holly Clapham-Rosenow, the Houston organization’s chief marketing officer, told Eater.
“Budgets have some fluidity if the right opportunities come about, and opportunities like Michelin, Top Chef, and James Beard—we’re going to jump on them,” she said.
The Texas Michelin Guide will also assess the culinary scene in Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio, and Clapham-Rosenow said that Houston First worked closely with those other cities to bring the guide to the Lone Star State. However, it doesn’t know how Michelin will use the hundreds of thousands of dollars it’s giving to the company. (The CEO of Visit Dallas told a local ABC affiliate earlier this month that each city included in the guide is paying $90,000 a year, while the state’s travel office is covering half of the total cost.)
Localities paying up for the Michelin Guide isn’t unprecedented: Visit California spent a whopping $600,000 to expand the guide to cover the entire Golden State in 2019. Visit Florida, meanwhile, coughed up $150,000 to get the company into the Sunshine State. And Colorado’s Michelin Guide was helped along by $100,000 a year for three years from the state tourism board, along with $70,000 to $100,000 from local boards and resort companies.
For its part, Michelin contends that it only expands to a new city or state when that location’s restaurants are up to snuff. “Travel Texas is working with Michelin on marketing and promotional efforts only. The agreement enables collaborative work to promote the area’s culinary offerings,” a representative for the Michelin Guide told Eater in an email. “The Michelin Guide Texas project came to life thanks to the quality of the state’s culinary scene. The whole credit of this exciting project is the talent of Texas’s restaurant teams who embody culinary innovation. Without them and their exceptional work, it would have been impossible for the Michelin Guide to have the ambition of proposing a first selection of Texas restaurants in 2024.”
A Texas Michelin Guide has been a topic of conversation for some time now, and chefs throughout the state told Robb Report last year both what benefits and what disadvantages it could bring to Texas’s fine-dining world. Now, though, it’s a sure bet that Michelin inspectors will be roaming the state’s establishments. Let the three-star race begin.
