Short answer: As of August 2026, Thessaloniki has no MICHELIN-starred restaurants — and it never has. That is not a verdict on the city's cooking. It is because the MICHELIN Guide's Greek selection covered only Athens. In 2026 MICHELIN announced it is expanding to Thessaloniki and Santorini, with the first selection for those destinations to be revealed in the second half of 2026. Thessaloniki is about to get its first MICHELIN-listed restaurants ever.
Every few weeks, someone sits at our counter and asks a version of the same question: "So which restaurants here have stars?" The answer used to require an awkward explanation. This year it finally has an expiry date.
Why Thessaloniki has had no stars
A MICHELIN star cannot be awarded to a restaurant in a city the guide does not cover. That is the whole story. MICHELIN publishes selections for defined destinations, and its inspectors work within those boundaries. Greece's selection launched with Athens; Thessaloniki, Greece's second city and arguably its most stubborn eating town, sat outside the map.
So for years the honest answer to "how many Michelin restaurants are in Thessaloniki?" was: zero, by definition, not by judgement. Restaurants here were never assessed and found wanting. They were never assessed at all.
What changes in 2026
In 2026, MICHELIN announced that its Greek coverage expands beyond Athens to include the city of Thessaloniki and the island of Santorini. The inaugural selection for these destinations is scheduled to be unveiled in the second half of 2026.
In practical terms, that means three things:
- Inspectors are already eating here. MICHELIN inspectors visit anonymously and pay their own bills, typically well before a selection is announced. If a guide arrives in the second half of 2026, the meals that inform it are happening now.
- The first list will be a starting point, not a ceiling. Inaugural selections in a new destination are usually modest, and grow in subsequent years as coverage deepens.
- Not everything on the list is a star. Most restaurants in any MICHELIN selection are recommended entries or Bib Gourmands rather than starred.
Star, Bib Gourmand, Green Star: what the symbols mean
Because these terms are about to be used a great deal in this city, they are worth getting right.
- One Star — high quality cooking, worth a stop.
- Two Stars — excellent cooking, worth a detour.
- Three Stars — exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.
- Bib Gourmand — good quality, good value cooking. Not a lesser star; a different measure entirely, and often where a city's soul lives.
- Green Star — leadership in sustainable gastronomy. Awarded independently of conventional stars.
Stars are awarded for what is on the plate — ingredient quality, mastery of technique, harmony of flavours, the personality of the chef in the cooking, and consistency across visits. Not tablecloths. Not chandeliers. This distinction matters in a city like ours, where the best cooking often happens in rooms with concrete floors.
What "fine dining in Thessaloniki" actually means
Thessaloniki's fine dining does not look like Paris, and it should not try to. Here, the phrase usually describes a small, chef-led restaurant with a tightly edited menu, single-origin Greek produce, proper table service and a bill of roughly 40 to 70 euros per person before wine. What distinguishes the city is the ingredient culture behind it: raw island cheeses from tiny dairies, wood-fire cooking inherited from grill houses and bakeries, and a produce network that runs through covered markets rather than distributors.
The interesting question is not whether Thessaloniki can produce restaurants at guide standard. It is whether the guide will recognise the local form that standard takes — a fire-driven, produce-led, informal-but-serious kind of cooking — rather than looking for imitations of somewhere else.
Where we stand
We should be direct, because you will reasonably wonder. Maestranza is not in the MICHELIN Guide. No restaurant in Thessaloniki is, yet. We hold 4.6 stars across more than 650 Google reviews, which is a different and more democratic measure, and we are proud of it.
What we do is narrow and deliberate: everything is cooked over oak and olive embers or in a wood-fired stone oven, in a kitchen with no walls between us and the room. We bake our sourdough at 04:30 from a culture older than the restaurant. We grow herbs and microgreens in a vertical farm two floors above the hearth and cut them minutes before they reach the plate. If inspectors come, they will find the same fire our regulars find on a Tuesday.
That is the only strategy available to any restaurant here right now: cook the way you cook, and let the city's first selection find who it finds.
Questions people actually ask
Are there Michelin-starred restaurants in Thessaloniki right now?
No. As of August 2026 there are none, because the guide has not yet published a Thessaloniki selection. The first one is expected in the second half of 2026.
Will Thessaloniki get stars immediately?
Unknown. A new destination selection may include stars, Bib Gourmands, Green Stars, or recommended entries in any combination. Nobody outside MICHELIN knows before publication, and any restaurant claiming to know is guessing.
How do I eat well here in the meantime?
Ignore the symbols that do not exist yet and use the ones that do: recent reviews, full rooms on weeknights, menus that change with the season, and kitchens you can see into. Ask where the produce comes from. In this city you will usually get a straight answer.
Sources & notes
- MICHELIN Guide — The MICHELIN Guide Expands in Greece for 2026 (expansion to Thessaloniki and Santorini; inaugural selection in the second half of 2026).
- MICHELIN Guide Greece — official selection.
- Maestranza rating figure: Google Maps business listing, retrieved August 2026.
- Written by Kostas, head chef and owner of Maestranza, Ptolemeon 29B, Thessaloniki. Last reviewed 6 August 2026.