Maydan is among the restaurants that earned its first Michelin star this week.

Rey Lopez / Maydan

For the fourth year, some out-of-towners have descended to render their judgement on D.C.’s food scene. As usual, there are a few surprises and new additions in the Michelin Guides’ annual list of starred restaurants.

Four restaurants in D.C. have newly been granted one Michelin star: Middle Eastern live-fire restaurant Maydan, Mid-Atlantic restaurant Gravitas in Ivy City, downtown Japanese restaurant Sushi Nakazawa, and chef Aaron Silverman’s Little Pearl.

Michelin employs a fleet of inspectors, who visit each restaurant multiple times and assess the performance of each restaurant (as they are anonymous, they don’t receive free meals).

One restaurant the Michelins omitted entirely this year is Bad Saint, which comes as something of a surprise. The lauded Filipino restaurant near Columbia Heights has received heaps of praise since its 2015 opening, including a James Beard Award this year for its chef, Tom Cunanan. After the restaurant failed to appear on Michelin’s annual Bib Gourmand list of affordable restaurants, where it had appeared for the previous three years, plenty speculated that this would be the year that Bad Saint nabbed its first star.

Michelin’s chief inspector for North America—who, like all of Michelin’s inspectors, operates anonymously—acknowledges that while Bad Saint is “a wonderful restaurant,” the meals the reviewers had didn’t rise to the level of a star. The company cites five criteria to award a star: quality of the products, mastery of flavor and cooking techniques, the expression of the chef’s personality in the cuisine, the value for the money, and consistency across a number of visits. “We’ll definitely keep looking at Bad Saint and look forward to seeing its evolution,” he says.

As for Bad Saint’s earlier exclusion from the Bib Gourmand selection, the inspector says the Bibs’ specific pricing constraints knocked it out of contention. Inspectors must be able to order two courses and a glass of wine or dessert for $40 or less. Bad Saint, the inspector says, didn’t meet that requirement, as it has in years past. Another restaurant that moved out of the Bib list is Maydan—another restaurant to receive its share of national acclaim. This year the inspector says the U Street-area restaurant left him “impressed with level of consistency. … It’s pretty clear to us that Maydan is operating on the one-star level.” 

Meanwhile, chef Aaron Silverman earns something of a triple crown with the Michelins: His acclaimed restaurants Rose’s Luxury and Pineapple & Pearls have been mainstays on the list with one and two stars, respectively, and now Little Pearl, also located near Barracks Row, joins with its own star. Open since 2017, the all-day cafe-meets-wine bar added a $45 prix-fixe dinner menu earlier this year.

This is also the first year that a restaurant in D.C. has lost its Michelin-starred status, and it happened twice this round. Robert Wiedmaier’s Siren, which nabbed its first star last fall, was rendered ineligible when it closed its doors earlier this year, promising to reopen in a new location. Another spot to fall off was Blue Duck Tavern, which has appeared on the Michelin list since 2016. Michelin’s inspector chalks that up to a series of meals that “didn’t align with the star criteria.”

Here’s the full list of starred restaurants (new additions are in bold):

Three stars
aka: “worth a special journey”

Two stars
aka: “worth a detour”

One star
aka: “worth a stop”

Previously: 

Michelin’s Bib Gourmand List Is Here A Day Early
Michelin Finally Gives A D.C.-Area Restaurant Three Stars

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