Michelin Guide Kobe and Awaji Island set for February 2027

The Michelin Guide Kobe and Awaji Island will publish its first selection on 16 February 2027, making the port city and the island across the strait the first new area Michelin has added in Japan in five years, since Nara.

Michelin announced the region on 16 September. Anonymous inspectors are already eating their way through four municipalities: Kobe on the mainland, and Awaji, Sumoto and Minamiawaji on the island, which the Akashi Kaikyo suspension bridge ties to the city.

The results will be read out in Tokyo at a single ceremony, the MICHELIN Guide Restaurant Ceremony Tokyo | Kansai 2027, together with the Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Nara selections. It is the first time several Japanese selections are revealed on the same day, and the date doubles as an anniversary: the first Tokyo guide, the 2008 edition, was Michelin's first in Asia.

Kobe and Awaji go from a one-off edition to a guide reviewed every year.

What the Michelin Guide Kobe will look at

Michelin's own pitch rests on three things. Ingredients first: Kobe beef, fish from the Seto Inland Sea and the produce of Awaji, known above all for its onions. Then Kobe as a port that took in foreign cooking early and turned some of it into yoshoku, Japan's Western-style dishes, next to a long sake tradition. Finally Awaji as a miketsukuni, one of the provinces that historically supplied the imperial table, with sea bream, conger eel and octopus.

Hyogo is not new ground for the guide: Michelin published a special Hyogo edition in 2015. What changes is the status. Kobe and Awaji become a regular area, reviewed every year like Osaka next door, rather than a one-off.

A partner with a tourism brief

The selection is produced with the Kobe-Awaji Island Gastronomy Association, a group of food businesses from both sides of the strait, which held its own press conference on 17 September. Its chairman, Hirotaka Wakamoto, told Sun TV that the area has excellent ingredients and should become a place people visit for its food culture, not only for sightseeing.

Gwendal Poullennec, international director of the Michelin Guides, said in the Japanese announcement that Kobe and Awaji share a spirit of welcoming people through food. As usual with these partnerships, neither side has said what the arrangement costs.

For diners, the map is already drawn: Michelin places the region less than an hour from Kyoto and from Osaka's counters and street food. February will show whether the inspectors think the short trip deserves stars.