Bay Area Michelin Star Restaurants - 2024 Edition (Part 2) + 2025 preview

It has been a long while since doing a post about Michelin recommended/starred restaurants--2019 in fact.

The Michelin guide is the most renowned rubric in the world for measuring culinary success. Unfortunately, we have some bad news this year. San Jose's first and only Michelin Star restaurant ever, Adega in Little Portugal, is now permanently closed. The silver lining is that it will be replaced with a second Petiscos restaurant. The original Petiscos is in Downtown San Jose's SoFA District and is not only featured in the guide but is one of San Jose's first two Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurants (a step below a Star and signifying a restaurant is of outstanding value for the quality).

Michelin has three different star categories:

• One Star - A very good restaurant in its category with cuisine prepared to a consistently high standard. A good place to stop on your journey.
• Two Stars - Excellent cuisine, skillfully and carefully crafted dishes of outstanding quality. Worth a detour.
• Three Stars - Exceptional cuisine with distinctive dishes and superlative ingredients. Worth a special journey.

New last year were "Green Stars" for restaurants that are at the forefront of sustainable, environmental, and ethical standards.

There are also restaurants in the Michelin guide that do not get a star, but are considered "Michelin Recommended." This is already a significant honor that a very small percentage of restaurants achieve. This distinction has gotten more rare since the guide now covers all of California instead of just the Bay Area. San Jose has a total of 4 Michelin Recommended restaurants (they already added Adega back).  It's the same list as a year ago.


San Jose Michelin Recommended Restaurants:

• Downtown
• Petiscos $$ (Bib Gourmand)
• East San Jose
• Adega $$$$ 
• Midtown
• Luna Mexican Kitchen $$ (Bib Gourmand)
• North San Jose
• LeYou $$

I also created a Google doc listing all of the star recipients for 2024, along with tabs for all previous years and some general statistics. 2020-2022 have finally been updated. There is no longer a physical book for California, but Michelin will update their site after new stars are awarded.

Below is an image capture from the doc. This year there were a total of 44 Bay Area restaurants that were awarded Michelin stars. 66% of the restaurants are locating in SF, 14% in Silicon Valley (9% in the South Bay, 5% in the Peninsula), 16% in Wine Country, 2% in the East Bay, and 2% in Marin. There are three new restaurants on the list for 2024 and four that no longer made the cut or were closed down. There were no new Silicon Valley restaurants on the list from last year, but I'm feeling optimistic about 2025.

Michelin will announce updates to the guide for Bay Area restaurants this summer and I'll make the 2025 updates faster than I did in 2024. It will be interesting if San Jose can earn back its star with Adega. There are also some new hopefuls that might be able to get a star in 2025. I have my eye on Alter Ego, Eos & Nyx, and Augustine. I also think Le Papillion and Rollati certainly deserve a shot and should at least be "Michelin Recommended."

Welcome to 2025!

We're officially in the future! 2025 sounds like a year where we should be driving flying cars and vacationing on Mars. It seems like we are well on our way to that kind of future, even if it's later than we expected decades ago.

We hope you all have a great start to the New Year with your family and friends!

Now let's have a quick look to see what AI think San Jose will look like in 2050.

New Year's Eve in San Jose

Hope you all have a fun and safe end to 2024! If you are still looking for things to do, there are some last minute suggestions over here.

Top San Jose Blog posts of 2024

Below are the most popular posts on The San Jose Blog this year. The general theme appears to be food🍔!

#1 Santana Row has a Speakeasy now! (April 12)

#2 Raising Cane's is opening their first San Jose location in Evergreen (Feb 4) 

#3 San Jose's fanciest movie theater shuts down (July 12)

#4 Campus Burgers will offer $2 Hamburgers and $3 Cheeseburgers in Downtown San Jose (Apr 28)

#5 Augustine will be Santana Row's newest high-end restaurant (Oct 17)

New Year's resolutions in San Jose

It's almost that time and SJ Today has some great food for thought on how to achieve your New Year's resolutions in San Jose. They list out ideas for everything from spending more quality time with your family to getting active and nurturing creativity. Check it out at the source link below.

Source: SJ Today

Noon Year's Eve at Happy Hollow

There are not a lot of kid-friendly options for New Year's Eve, but there is one great one at San Jose's Happy Hollow Park and Zoo. They are doing a "Noon Year's Eve" with a countdown to noon instead of midnight on December 31st.

The early New Year celebrations runs from 11am to 1:30pm and includes games, crafts, activities, a ventriloquist magic show, and scavenger hunt. As expected, the countdown and ball drop happen at just before noon. It's a great family-friendly event that everyone can participate in.

For more info, head over here.

San Jose is getting another unique cocktail bar - BitterBuck!

A couple legends from the San Jose craft cocktail scene are opening up a new bar in Downtown San Jose with a very unique menu. Cache Bouren and Tomoyo Yoshinaga come from Single Barrel (which I still think is the best bar to ever exist in the Bay Area), it's spiritual successor Haberdasher, and Cash Only.

The new bar will be called BitterBuck and it's going to be unique in several different ways. First, the menu will be focused on amaro-centric drinks. Amaro is a bitter Italian herbal liquor that is used in complex and interesting drinks. There won't be any lemon and lime juice, forcing people to order different kinds of drinks than their usual favorites. Hopefully this will let them discover new drinks in this highly-specialized bar.

BitterBuck's second interesting twist is that will be open at 7am every single day. They will also specialize in pour-over coffee and cold brew and then transition to alcohol later in the day. This is common in Europe where the same space can serve as both a cafe and bar. It makes a lot of sense, many coffee shops open and close early while bars stay open late. This helps distribute sunk costs like rent across more hours of operation.

Thirdly, and this is where it gets crazy, the bar will have "whimsical taxidermy" incorporated into the ambiance. The interior will feature weathered brick, dark wood, green booths, historical photos and artwork, and yes--taxidermy. The vibe will be unique for sure.

BitterBuck will also have a small kitchen with a limited menu similar to a wine bar. Food will be seasonal and chef-driven.

The goal is to open by February at 30 Fountain Alley #170, which is next to the excellent Goodtime Bar and Scratch Cookery. I can't wait!

Source: SVBJ

STEM job growth in San Jose outpaces other cities

San Jose already has more STEM jobs (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) than most other cities in the world, both in terms of quantity and percentage of jobs. For the United States, San Jose has the highest concentration of STEM jobs by far. Now in the STEMdex, San Jose has further grown the number of STEM jobs by 2% between 2019 and 2023.

Salaries for STEM jobs average $112,800, nearly double non-STEM jobs. Part of the growth driver is AI (and yes the image below was created by AI, thanks Grok!), which is significantly increasing labor productivity and demand for employees with AI experience. Within the subset of STEM, generative AI jobs rose 750% between April 2022 and April 2024.

Source: SVBJ