Michelin has added five new Irish restaurants to their Ireland landscape, two in the republic and three up north.

The Michelin guide is published online and updates monthly. It’s essentially a curated selection of what Michelin deems the best restaurants across Ireland.

The new additions to the guide are The Bishop’s Buttery at the Cashel Palace hotel in Tipperary; Terre at Castlemartyr Resort in Cork; Fontana, in Down; Artis by Phelim O’Hagan, in Derry and Blank, in Belfast. The addition of these five restaurants brings the total number of new Irish spots included over t up to 12.

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Michelin conducts secret rounds of inspections with criteria no one is fully sure about. But we do know their most recent round of inspections began in March last year.

The next Michelin Guide for Great Britain & Ireland will be announced Monday, March 27. When all the new Michelin Stars, Bib Gourmands and Green Stars will be revealed in an Oscar-like ceremony.

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These new ‘inclusions’ have ignited the speculative side of the food-oriented public around which Irish restaurants may be awarded stars when the next guide arrives. Lignum, in Galway, is hotly tipped to get their first star this year. My personal dark horse is Woodruff in Stillorgan. Anyone who has eaten in Dede in Baltimore would be surprised it doesn’t have two stars, so fingers crossed for them.

Aimsir in Co. Kildare is the Republic’s only three-Michelin-starred restaurant. Dublin is home to all three of its two-Michelin-starred restaurants: Chapter One by Mickael Viljanen, Liath and Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud.

Elsewhere on CHAR: What even is a Michelin Star and how do you get one?