The Michelin guide now looms over the restaurant scene. Have prices risen as a result?

We compared menus before and after restaurants received their accolades. Here’s what we found.

Published

While The Inquirer has celebrated our home as a first-rate food city for years, Philadelphia just received its first Michelin stars last fall. However, that long wait for international recognition could have been a blessing in disguise. When restaurants receive their first star, higher menu prices seem to follow, even when accounting for general inflation, according to a 2023 study.

Part of these price hikes could come down to inflation. The price of essentials has largely increased, and so, too, has the bill when eating out – by around 2.5%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Some of any increase in the restaurants’ prices [is] due to conditions in the economy that [are] pushing up all prices,” said Tom Weiss, professor emeritus at the University of Kansas and coauthor of the 2023 research paper.

“The impact of the star is the increase in the restaurants’ prices above the inflationary effect.”

We wanted to see whether prices in Philly’s restaurant scene have been impacted by either inflation or Michelinflation. The Inquirer collected menus from last fall, before the Michelin Guide bestowed its accolades, and compared them with current prices. Here’s what we found.

Dalessandro's, Sally$15
El Chingon$20
Del Rossi's$18
Fiorella$26
Kalaya$75
Suraya$78
Pizzeria Beddia$83
Zahav$90
Honeysuckle$95
Her Place Supper Club$97
My Loup$125
Vetri Cucina$165
Friday Saturday Sunday$185
Provenance$225
$50
$100
$150
$200
$250
$300
$350
+7%
+10%
+18%
0%
+13%
+9%
+3%
0%
+42%
+13%
0%
0%
+11%
0%
Dalessandro's, Sally$16
El Chingon$22
Del Rossi's$21
Fiorella$26
Kalaya$85
Suraya$85
Pizzeria Beddia$85
Zahav$90
Honeysuckle$135
Her Place Supper Club$110
My Loup$125
Vetri Cucina$165
Friday Saturday Sunday$205
Provenance$225
$50
$100
$150
$200
$250
$300
$350
2025
2026

  • Last year, Friday Saturday Sunday offered an eight-course tasting menu – amuse bouches and dessert included – for $185 per person. The restaurant won a Michelin star in November, which came at no surprise to our readers.

  • Today, an eight-course dinner at the intimate award-winning Rittenhouse restaurant costs 11% more, at $205 per head.

  • Two other Philly restaurants received a Michelin star last fall: Provenance and Her Place Supper Club.

  • Provenance’s seafood-focused tasting menu costs the same today as it did last year: $225 per person for a spread of 20 to 25 dishes.

    Her Place Supper Club’s seven-course set menu, on the other hand, increased by 13% – from $97 to $110 per person.

  • Both Her Place’s and Friday Saturday Sunday’s price changes increased more than the 2.5% for inflation but were lower than the research paper’s average of a 30% increase.

    We reached out to all three Michelin-starred restaurants, but they declined to comment.

  • Stars aren’t the only Michelin distinction a restaurant can earn. Bibs are bestowed on establishments that serve “high-quality food at great value,” according to the Michelin Guide.

    We looked at menu items from six of the 10 restaurants that received a Bib Gourmand to see if prices had changed.

  • El Chingon’s skirt steak tacos – tacos arrachera tatemada – went up from $20 to $22. Chef and owner Juan Carlos Aparicio says he had to adjust the menus because “everything went up: gas, sugar, eggs.”

    “Last year we used to buy cases of arrachera, and per case was between $450 and $500,” said Aparicio. “Now it’s over $1,000.”

  • On the higher end of the Bib Gourmand price spectrum, Pizzeria Beddia’s hoagie room experience ticked up slightly, from $83 to $85.

    The guide also celebrated a local delicacy by naming three of the 10 Bib recipients cheesesteak shops. Last year, a Del Rossi’s cheesesteak stood at $18. Now, the sandwich costs $21.

  • Similarly, a cheesesteak from Dalessandro’s went from $15 last year to $16 this year. Same for a red pie from Sally.

    Most of the Bib Gourmand recipients for which we have data on old prices only showed increases proportional to inflation or by $1 or $3.

  • Finally, we gathered previous and current tasting menus from eight of the 12 Philly restaurants on the Michelin Guide’s Recommended list. These restaurants were recognized for their good-quality meals that were “not quite star or Bib level,” according to Michael Ellis, the former international director of Michelin Guide books, on its website.

  • Four of these Recommended restaurants increased the price of their fixed or tasting menus since last fall, including Hiroki, which closed in August.

    Suraya and Kalaya both jumped from the mid-$70s up to $85.

  • Last year, Honeysuckle offered a four-course prix fixe menu for $95. After a restructure, it now offers an increased six-course tasting menu for $135.

    Omar Tate, chef and co-owner of Honeysuckle, said that staff found themselves frequently adding additional courses to guests’ meals. “We weren’t charging people for this. [We were] basically gifting all these dishes and not profiting from it at all,” he said. This started conversations about formally switching to a tasting menu – long before the restaurant received Michelin recognition. But he wanted to wait until after January, once the busy season had slowed down.

    “It was kind of like perfect alignment and perfect timing,” said Tate, “but it was an economical and experiential decision.”

Is it more expensive to eat at local restaurants once they receive Michelin recognition? The short answer is – on average – yes, but it’s hard to say if accolades alone are the driving force behind the bigger bill. Inflation almost definitely plays a role. A change in the chef, for example, could also contribute to a change in menu prices, as could “how much competition there was in their location,” according to Weiss.

Price increases can also lag behind Michelin awards. “Anecdotal information for a few places indicates the big jump would take place in the second and third years,” said Weiss.

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While Michelin-recognized restaurants might have the perception of a more valuable dining experience, some restaurant owners do not feel the need to change their prices to reflect that. “We just didn’t believe that if we increased the prices, it was going to make us a better restaurant,” said Aparicio, chef and owner of El Chingon. “We already do what we do best, and we wanted to keep it that way.”

The Michelin Guide will once again celebrate restaurants across the Northeast at a ceremony on Dec. 14. Our advice: make those reservations now, just in case the prices rise again.

Correction

This story was later updated to remove River Twice’s price increase of $75 to $85. Their initial price was collected from January 2025 instead of Fall 2025.

Methodology

The Inquirer saved menus from restaurants in early November 2025, before the Michelin Guide revealed stars, Bib Gourmands, or recommendations. For any restaurants for which we didn’t anticipate recognition, we used the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. We then used these prices to compare against the current menus as of September 2026.

For the restaurants that won a Michelin star or were on the Recommended list, we used their tasting menus as the primary point of comparison. For the Bib Gourmand restaurants, we looked at some of their most popular dishes. We excluded restaurants for which we could not find menus from before the Michelin Guide announced its awards.

Staff Contributors

  • Design and development: Charmaine Runes and Sam Morris
  • Data and reporting: Aileen Clarke and Charmaine Runes
  • Editing: Sam Morris
  • Illustration: Fortunate Joaquin
  • Copy Editing: Addam Schwartz

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Topics mentioned in this story

El ChingonFriday Saturday SundayHer PlaceHoneysuckleKalayaMy LoupPizzeria BeddiaProvenanceSurayaZahavWeekend Food