This year’s Michelin ceremony takes place on Nov. 3 in Greenville, SC, home to the French tire company’s North American headquarters. And with 2025 comes big changes for the guide, rebranded as the Michelin Guide to the American South.
The new regional guide to the southern United States now includes restaurants in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee, along with the previously released Atlanta guide.
But the 2025 guide to the South does not include Georgia restaurants outside of Metro Atlanta, an especially glaring omission for the state’s other celebrated dining scenes in Athens and Savannah (*cough, cough* The Grey in Savannah, Puma Yu’s in Athens). Beyond Athens and Savannah, however, are thousands of mom-and-pop restaurants scattered throughout Georgia in cities like Macon, Columbus, Augusta, Albany, Brunswick, and Valdosta.
What’s up with that?
It comes down to partnerships between Michelin and boards of tourism and tourism organizations.
For 2025, Michelin partnered with tourism marketing organization Travel South USA, which absorbed the Atlanta guide and took on the financial responsibilities associated with production. The Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau footed part of the bill with Michelin in 2023 and 2024.
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Four new restaurants were awarded Bib Gourmands in the 2024 Atlanta Michelin Guide. (Photo by Beth McKibben)
When news dropped in the spring that this year’s Michelin guide would exclude restaurants in other Georgia cities, like you, I was curious about the decision.
“This is only the beginning of our story with the American South region, and as the MICHELIN Guide looks to the future, we observe very often the extension of its geographical scope within a state or a region over time,” a Michelin representative told me at the time. They declined to comment further on the exact reason for capping the boundaries for Georgia at Metro Atlanta.
I suspect the omission came down to partnership restrictions between Michelin and Travel South. So, it sounds like there’s a fair chance the guide will continue to expand over time. We saw this in 2024 with the Michelin Guide to Atlanta and the inclusion of restaurants outside the Perimeter.
Still, the broader exclusion of Georgia restaurants in 2025 is a head-scratcher.
I should also point out that a regional guide to the South means much more competition for Metro Atlanta restaurants this year, and the chance a few currently listed restaurants might either drop in ranking or out of the guide entirely for 2025.
I am pretty confident we will see many of the same Metro Atlanta restaurants from last year’s guide in the 2025 Michelin Guide to the American South. Whether those restaurants maintain, lose, or gain status this year remains to be seen.
According to the Georgia Restaurant Association, there are more than 12,000 restaurants in Metro Atlanta, a region comprising 6.3 million people across 11 counties.
Michelin’s dining inspectors have a lot of ground to cover in the South, much of which is rural and dotted with farms and small towns. Georgia is no exception.
Related Story: What Michelin got right and wrong in the 2024 Atlanta Guide
My hope for this year’s guide is that Michelin inspectors took a deeper dive into the Metro Atlanta food scene, including venturing to the south side, an area extremely underrepresented in the 2023 and 2024 guides. I would also like to see at least another Green Star given out here and more emphasis placed on Metro Atlanta’s culinary diversity and its small, independent restaurants, and less on fine dining and restaurants with multiple locations.
All will be revealed on Nov. 3, sparking the yearly debate and scores of hot takes on what Michelin got right and wrong in the guide.
Rough Draft’s dining team will be reporting live from the Michelin Guide to the American South ceremony in Greenville on Nov. 3. You can watch the ceremony unfold live on Michelin’s YouTube channel, starting at 7:15 p.m. ET.
