LAS VEGAS — Park City is now home to a Michelin-rated restaurant or two. Or three, actually.
The Michelin Guide on Wednesday evening released its first-ever Southwest Guide, which lists recommended restaurants across Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada, in a ceremony at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas.
Handle, The Nelson Cottage by High West and Matilda are the three Park City establishments to make the pages of the region’s first little red book.
Handle earns a Michelin Recommended
Handle, which opened in 2014 at the Gateway Center in Park City, is led by chef and co-owner Briar Handly. He also opened a Salt Lake City location in 2016 called HSL.
As a Vermont native, Handly said he learned to cook with the seasons, which is how he designed the modern American restaurant. Menus are tweaked and printed daily, and no style of cuisine is off the table.
He attended the ceremony in Las Vegas, and said by Thursday the announcement had fully sunk in.
“More than anything I just feel incredibly proud — of our team, of what we’ve built at HANDLE, and of the restaurant community here in Utah,” he said. “The recognition is an incredible honor, but more than anything it motivates us to keep growing, keep getting better and stay true to what we’ve always wanted HANDLE to be.”
This Michelin recognition isn’t the first time Handly has caught the eye of prestigious reviewers. In 2020, 2022 and 2023, he was named a semifinalist for the James Beard Award in the Best Chef: Mountain category.
Following the initial announcement of the Michelin Southwest guide, Handly said he expects the decision to include Utah will lead to improved dining quality statewide.
“Stars from them do not come easy, so we will see what shakes out in their 2026 guide,” Handly said in December. “If nothing else, I believe it will make chefs of the Wasatch step up their game a bit, including us, so that’s exciting, and we are looking forward to it.”
Handly expressed the same goal, of continually stepping up his game, going forward from this first year.
“We will continue to put out the best food we can,” he said. “We’ll keep supporting local, keep pushing ourselves creatively, and continue to take care of our guests and our team as best we can.”
The Nelson Cottage earns a Michelin Recommended
The Nelson Cottage by High West Distillery, located on Park Avenue a few doors up from High West Saloon, is a tasting-menu concept led by Chef de Cuisine Julia Sorroche.
It’s known for whiskey pairings and “whiskey ambassadors” who guide diners through the tasting and sipping of a multi-course dinner. The menu changes every two to three weeks, sometimes more frequently, and each iteration is built entirely around what is available and at its peak in Utah.
High West’s Executive Chef Jordan Harvey, who attended the Las Vegas ceremony, said he believed that structure may have resonated with the Michelin inspectors.
“I think we’re chosen for not just the quality of ingredients but what we do with them, being of a particular size and style of menu and service. It really allows us to hone in and focus on little details and nuances,” Harvey said.
Harvey credited Sorroche for guiding The Nelson Cottage to the Michelin level. Sorroche has been with the restaurant for four years, and she incorporates her training under Michelin-rated chefs and her Brazilian heritage in each menu. Either in flavor or in presentation, Sorroche said, she adds touches of Brazil, even in the use of green and yellow to represent the country’s flag.
When the Southwest Michelin guide was first announced, Sorroche said she’s always wanted to win a Michelin star and that she believed The Nelson Cottage was already operating at that level.
“I’ve always tried to push myself,” she said in January. “I think that would be awesome, not just from a personal standpoint as a professional accolade, but also as something that I think my team and everyone at the cottage would love to get is that recognition.”
So the Michelin Recommended inclusion is a huge milestone, both Sorroche and Harvey said.
“Being a part of the first Southwest Michelin Guide is a dream come true from a culinary standpoint,” Sorroche said. “I am so proud of my team for all their hard work into getting this recognition.”
Now, her team plans to continue pushing for their ultimate goal: a Michelin star.
Matilda earns a Michelin Recommended
Matilda, a pizza and small plates restaurant in the Snow Park shopping center, is co-owned by Ian Pope, the chef also behind Five5eeds.
Setting out to create the right pizza, Pope knew he wanted a sourdough crust because of its flavor and better digestibility, so he brought on Sam Pew, a sourdough baker in Salt Lake City, as a consultant.
“He is obsessed about the flavor of sourdough, and not just the act of sourdough, but he’s obsessed about what flour you put in there, the percentages of flours, the flavor of the different flours, and that really aligned with what we wanted,” Pope said.
The result is a 100% sourdough, fully naturally leavened, with a touch of rye for the added nutty aroma and taste, cooked at a low temperature to keep its form. And of course, fresh, produce-driven toppings.
Pope missed the award ceremony in Las Vegas, and said the announcement came as a complete shock. He said throughout his career in hospitality, the Michelin Guide has been “the North Star” to the industry.
“To see Matilda included in the guide is genuinely a dream come true and a reflection of the hard work, care and commitment of our entire team,” he said. “We’ve always believed that a relentless focus on quality and consistency would take us in the right direction and to have that recognized by Michelin is an incredibly proud moment for all of us.”
The Michelin Guide evaluates restaurants using a long-standing global methodology built on five criteria: quality of ingredients, harmony of flavors, mastery of technique, the chef’s personal expression and consistency across multiple anonymous visits.
Three primary recognitions are included in each guide: Michelin stars, from one to three, are the most prestigious; a Bib Gourmand is given to “friendly establishments that serve good food at moderate prices;” and Michelin Recommended, which honors establishments serving “good food.”
Founded in France in the early 1900s to support motorists — and tire sales — the guide has maintained the same inspection approach ever since, expanding its reach worldwide.
Michelin introduced its first North American guide in 2005 for New York and has steadily grown its coverage to include major U.S. and Canadian destinations. Recent additions include Colorado, Atlanta, Mexico, Texas, Quebec, the American South, Philadelphia and Boston.
When the guide expanded to the United States 20 years ago, International Director Gwendal Poullennec said his inspectors witnessed a surge in quality and quantity of restaurants. So a few years ago, the guide started to plan a gradual expansion throughout the rest of the country.
The Southwest Guide is the latest in that growth, he said.
The Park City Chamber/Bureau was influential in bringing the guide to the state through the Wasatch Culinary Collective, which includes Visit Salt Lake, Visit Park City and Sundance Mountain Resort. Together, the collective, as paid sponsors, helped turn Michelin’s eyes toward Utah restaurants for the first time.
Jennifer Wesselhoff, the president and CEO of the Park City Chamber/Bureau, and Dan Howard, the vice president of communications for the Chamber/Bureau, were both in Las Vegas for the ceremony. Chad Linebaugh, the president and general manager of Sundance Mountain Resort, also represented the Wasatch Back.
Wesselhoff and Howard were overjoyed to see The Nelson Cottage and Handle teams at the ceremony cocktail hour. Even though the two helped secure the guide in Utah, they had no idea if anyone from Park City would be included.
“I’m giddy on the inside!” Wesselhoff said.
She said the Michelin Guide is part of her team’s thoughtful strategy toward creating more of a four-season economy, especially for low-snow years like this one.
“With the loss of Sundance (Film Festival), there was a lot of conversation about, ‘How do we elevate the arts?’” she said. “The museums and the galleries and the artists, but it’s also film and culinary arts, and that’s where we started thinking about, ‘How can we really lean into our restaurants as culinary arts?’”
Ultimately, projects like a Michelin Guide are marketing, the Chamber/Bureau said, a way to put the Park City name in front of a wider food-loving audience.
That’s also an “ingredient” that Michelin looks for when determining a new location, Poullennec said.
“When we make the decision to move forward with the full-scale Michelin Guide selection project, we have to ensure that not only are there existing good restaurants,” he said, “but also because we feel there is a real dynamic, and that the arrival of the Michelin Guide could play its role as a catalyst to push the destinations to the next level in the coming years.”
During Wednesday’s ceremony, across the four states included in the guide, Michelin announced one two-star restaurant, four one-star restaurants, 18 Bib Gourmand restaurants, 41 recommended restaurants and two “Mindful Voices” awards.
This is just the start. Poullennec said the guide is designed to be updated and evolve as the industry rises to the challenge.
It’s not just Michelin’s presence that helps “raise the bar,” he said. It’s ultimately the consumer.
“To build a sustainable gastronomic ecosystem, first and foremost you need discerning clients. I mean, foodies,” Poullennec said. “The quality of the restaurants is driven by the local foodies. The more discerning they are, the more willing they are to be exposed to new trends, new concepts … it makes a whole difference.”
