Three days after Michelin announced it was coming to Pittsburgh, Cory Hughes, chef and co-owner of Fig & Ash, received a review that stunned him.
“With Michelin coming to town, we expected more out of Fig & Ash,” Hughes recalls the reviewer writing. He was “sitting there with my jaw open.”
“We do what we do,” he says. “We don’t cook for awards, Michelin or James Beard. We cook the food we enjoy cooking and serve the guests we enjoy.”
Fig & Ash had not changed, Hughes says, but diners were already talking about the restaurant differently. Over time, though, he says he’s come to see Michelin as a chance to bring visitors, investment and chefs back to Pittsburgh. “Anything that highlights Pittsburgh is good for all restaurants,” he says.
Still, Hughes does not want Michelin to change what Fig & Ash is. He built the restaurant around “going to a chef’s house for Sunday dinner,” he says. “It’s comfort food to me,” and he won’t change how the restaurant works just because inspectors are in town
Who pays for the guide to come?
The Michelin Guide is expanding its Great Lakes coverage to include Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Cincinnati. Michelin says inspectors dine anonymously, pay their own bills and evaluate food according to five criteria.
Christian Frangiadis, chef of One by Spork and owner of Spork, is glad Michelin is coming, especially for the tourism it could bring. He describes the arrangement as a bit of “pay-to-play,” because cities pay to bring the guide to their region, but stresses that restaurants cannot buy stars.
Christian Frangiadis, head chef of One by Spork and owner of Spork. Photo courtesy of Spork.
Wholesale food supplier Sysco has sponsored several Michelin Guide ceremonies, including the 2025 Northeast Cities event in Philadelphia. There, the company served as the event’s official food distributor, and a Sysco executive presented the Young Chef Award. Sysco also noted that some of its customers could receive Michelin distinctions. That ceremony partnership prompted questions among some chefs and restaurateurs about the guide’s independence.
In response to questions from NEXTpittsburgh, the Michelin Guide said its partnership with Sysco ended in 2025 and that commercial arrangements have no bearing on its restaurant ratings.
“Commercial partnerships do not influence which restaurants are selected, inspected or recognized,” Michelin said in a statement. “The MICHELIN Guide’s restaurant selections are based solely on the independent assessments of our inspectors.”
What troubles Frangiadis is how little restaurants know about the people assessing them. “We don’t have any control over what happens,” he says. “Because it’s so secret and we don’t know many details, you wonder: What’s the purpose? Who is inspecting you?”
“Is it Ruth Reichl, or somebody who wrote an article in the State and Observer in 1979?” he adds. “I don’t know.”
John Wabeck, wine director at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse and a former chef, questions whether sponsorships could undermine Michelin’s appearance of independence. “I want the process to be as anonymous as possible,” he says. “Once you take a penny from anyone, you’ve got nothing.”
What does a star mean?
Frangiadis says he has eaten at “really mediocre three-star Michelin restaurants” and “incredible one-star Michelin restaurants.” The criteria, he says, “have branched out a lot and changed quite a bit.” The ratings seem different “from place to place and judge to judge.”
He compares Michelin with The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, which has recognized outstanding restaurants in places outside Michelin’s restaurant guide coverage. Copenhagen’s Noma, which topped the 50 Best list multiple times, held two Michelin stars during some of those years. These systems do not produce a single, universal ranking, Frangiadis says. “Does that mean there are 300 or so three-star restaurants better than Noma?” he asks. “That’s kind of crazy.”
Brian Pekarcik of Local Provisions and formerly of Spoon, is a Pittsburgh-born chef and restaurateur who previously worked with Gary Danko and Bradley Ogden in California. He sees Michelin as a chance for Pittsburgh to be measured nationally. Before Michelin came to the United States, James Beard Awards and Mobil stars were among the benchmarks he followed.
Brian, Gillian, Hope and Jessica Pekarcik. Photo by Laura Petrilla courtesy of Local Provisions.
“I think it’s a good thing because it finally gives Pittsburgh national accreditation and a national standard,” he says. “Even if standards vary from market to market, it at least accredits Pittsburgh’s restaurant scene.”
But Pekarcik questions how evenly Michelin applies its standards as it moves into smaller markets. “There didn’t seem to be a consistent measure of who received one star, two stars or none. It seems so relative to the critic, the Michelin reviewer and that person’s standards.”
Pekarcik sees today’s chefs building on a previous generation’s effort to raise Pittsburgh’s dining standards. He names Lilith and Fet-Fisk as restaurants pushing the scene forward. “It’s long overdue for them to be compared with restaurants in bigger markets,” he says.
Fet-Fisk’s dining room. Photo by Roman Hladio.
Dave DeSimone, a longtime Pittsburgh food and wine writer, sees an opportunity beyond stars, too. Michelin’s Bib Gourmand highlights more casual restaurants offering good food at moderate prices. Pittsburgh has “plenty of potential candidates,” he says, though he wonders how the guide will find them without experienced local reviewers.
DeSimone also relays a saying among French chefs: One star can “make” a restaurant, while two or three can “break” it — bringing overwhelming attention and pressure to maintain the honor.
What might recognition demand?
Hughes thinks staffing will be a major hurdle for Pittsburgh restaurants trying to raise the level of cooking and service. “Changing what you do and making sure every service and every plate is perfect can only happen with more staffing,” he says. Many kitchens, he adds, write menus around the staff they have.
“Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars” is a documentary series about the strain of pursuing the guide. “The pressure is astronomical,” says Hughes. “When I see restaurants trying to push for stars, all I can see are ulcers, anxiety and hundred-hour workweeks.”
Hughes hopes Michelin may also prompt diners to pay closer attention to how food is prepared. He criticizes restaurants that, in his view, rely on national chain food distributors for prep and reheat sauces.
There are broader reasons to ask what recognition can cost. Research on Michelin’s New York expansion found that receiving a star was associated with a higher likelihood of restaurant closure. A separate study of Michelin reviews and chef interviews in New York and San Francisco found racialized patterns in how cuisines were evaluated.
Wabeck worries that restaurants may spend more on staff, décor and elaborate menus to compete, then pass those costs to diners. “If Michelin is here and people start chasing stars instead of regular guests, making guests feel welcome and giving them a reason to come back, I hope they don’t do that.”
Chef Csilla Thackray. Photo courtesy of Titusz.
Csilla Thackray, chef at Titusz, looks at Michelin as a distant concern for her “fledgling restaurant.” The restaurant opened earlier this year. “There’s no way we deserve that,” she says. “We’re new and just getting our footing and trying to, like, find our culture.”
She worries that making a star the goal could displace the purpose of hospitality. “If the goal is to get there, I think something’s lost,” she says.
Pittsburgh’s smaller market, with fewer resources than larger food cities, may also make the guide’s standards difficult to meet.
Pittsburgh, Thackray says, can feel insular and protective of what it has. Some people may worry that Michelin will bring outside expectations and push the city to become “like New York.” She adds, “I don’t know how founded that is.”
Michelin may bring Pittsburgh a wider audience, but it cannot decide what makes a meal worth returning for, Wabeck says.
“What matters more to me now is that people walk out the door happy,” Wabeck says.
Which area restaurants do local chefs think deserve Michelin recognition? We asked them.
Dining and Cooking