Taipei’s First Michelin Guide Awards 20 Restaurants
The inaugural Michelin Guide Taipei, announced on 14 March 2018, gave three stars to the Cantonese restaurant Le Palais and two to RyuGin and The Guest House.
The Michelin Guide announced its first selection for Taipei on 14 March 2018. Twenty restaurants received stars: one with three, two with two and seventeen with one.
Le Palais
The only three-star restaurant was Le Palais, the Cantonese restaurant on the 17th floor of the Palais de Chine Hotel, near Taipei Main Station. Its chefs, Ken Chen and Matt Chen, are known for roast duck, barbecued meats, a baked egg custard tart and a long list of dishes that must be ordered ahead. “It is a happy day as our team effort has led to this achievement,” Chen said at the ceremony. The restaurant has kept its three stars in every edition since.
Two stars
Shoun RyuGin is the Taipei restaurant of Seiji Yamamoto, the chef of RyuGin in Tokyo, and applies Japanese kaiseki technique to Taiwanese ingredients under chef Ryohei Hieda. The Guest House, at the Sheraton Grand Taipei, serves Sichuan and Hunan dishes along with Taiwanese classics, in a style associated with the banquet cooking of the mid-20th century.
One star
The one-star list showed the city’s range. It included the Cantonese restaurants Three Coins and Ya Ge, several Japanese counters, Taiwanese cooking at Golden Formosa and Ming Fu, the beef noodle and steak house Danny’s, and a group of young contemporary restaurants: Mume, RAW, the Taipei restaurant of André Chiang, and Taïrroir, where Kai Ho combined French training with Taiwanese flavours.
A week before the stars, the guide had published its Bib Gourmand list, which included stalls in the city’s night markets, a first for the category. For many residents this was the more accurate portrait of how Taipei eats.
What followed
The guide expanded to Taichung in 2020 and to Tainan and Kaohsiung in 2022, and now covers seven cities and counties. Taïrroir rose to two stars in 2019 and to three in 2023, and JL Studio in Taichung joined it at the top. The 2026 edition lists 434 restaurants.
The first guide arrived as the city was gaining attention abroad for its food, and it has been followed by a new generation of hotels, most recently Capella Taipei.