The Top 60 Restaurants Near MAK

There is no menu at MAK, which is either thrilling or terrifying depending on your relationship with control. This creative tasting-experience restaurant on the edge of Maribor puts you entirely in the chef's hands for a parade of colourful, unconventional courses that shift in texture and combination in ways you won't see coming. Two mismatched rooms, deliberately spare tables, and a kitchen clearly uninterested in playing it safe.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The only decision you make here is how many courses you want, three up to seven, and then you surrender the rest to the kitchen. This Michelin-starred restaurant in the Slovenian countryside sits behind floor-to-ceiling glass that fills a surprisingly minimalist room with light. The chef mines the flavors of Styria with real imagination, and what lands on the table is regional cooking made genuinely strange, in the best sense.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A two-Michelin-star dining room in the wine country south of Graz, where the sommelier reportedly has 35,000 bottles and the knowledge to match. The chef runs a surprise menu only, short or long, built on premium ingredients handled without ceremony. Very few tables, warm wood, modern lines, and wine bottles doing double duty as decor. Book well ahead, or the only surprise will be having nowhere to sit.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars

Lieperts is the kind of place that does breakfast on weekends, snacks in the afternoon, and Michelin-starred tasting menus on select evenings, all under one roof in a small Austrian wine village. The chef runs a surprise menu of five to seven courses with no shortage of amuse-bouches before them, leaning on regional produce but pulling in broader influences. The wine list leans heavily local, and there are a few guestrooms upstairs if the drive home feels ambitious.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Sattlerhof sits among its own vineyards in the Styrian wine country, which goes some way toward explaining the 650-label wine list. It's a Michelin-starred restaurant serving a creative six-course seasonal menu, with herbs and flowers pulled from the kitchen garden. The family runs the whole operation, front to back, and the warmth of the room is earned rather than performed. Comfortable rooms are available if the wine list gets the better of you.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A Baroque parish church sits directly across the street, which sets the tone: this is a place that takes its surroundings seriously. The seasonal tasting menu at this Michelin-starred restaurant leans on a kitchen garden with its own fish pond, and the wine list skews toward natural and organic. The room balances old farmhouse warmth with something more considered, and the terrace looks out over the garden that feeds most of what's on your plate.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A Michelin-starred restaurant inside a listed historic building perched in a small village near Leibnitz, with a terrace that earns its summer reputation. The chef runs a five or seven-course surprise menu built on local produce, with the occasional Asian turn that keeps things from feeling too earnest. Wine pairings are offered alongside non-alcoholic alternatives, and the chef has a habit of appearing front-of-house to see how things land.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A Michelin-starred country house restaurant sitting beside the Neumeister winery, so the wine list takes care of itself. The chef's seasonal cooking is quietly confident, letting the ingredients do the talking rather than dressing them up. Inside is warm and a little snug; outside, the terrace looks out over the village and the rolling Styrian countryside. A hostess who doubles as a sommelier keeps things personal in a way that bigger restaurants can only aspire to.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A 13th-century rectory tucked beneath a parish church in the Sausal wine hills is an unlikely place for a Michelin-starred tasting menu, and yet here we are. The kitchen runs a five- or seven-course surprise menu, booked online with optional wine pairings, and the cooking toggles between subtle and bold contrasts without ever losing its footing. The sommelier reads the room as naturally as he reads a label.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A small sourdough loaf with whipped butter and smoked bacon is how things start at this modern Austrian restaurant in Gamlitz wine country. The kitchen leans into comfort, with house-made pork crackling dumplings and goulash served with a handmade roll. The wine list runs deep on local vintages, which makes sense given the address. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and in summer the shaded terrace is the only place to be.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A restaurant that seats twelve and means it. Miza za štiri started as a home dining room for four guests, and the intimate logic never left when it moved to this countryside spot outside Maribor. Two tasting menus run the kitchen's range, one built around the house signatures, the other chasing flavors tied to memory and personal inspiration. Slovenian wine pairings are on offer, and in a room this small, saying yes feels like the obvious move.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A wood-fired stove does the cooking here, which tells you something about the pace of lunch at this country gasthaus opposite the parish church in a small Styrian village. The kitchen leans on its own garden and fish pond, so the menu follows the season rather than a formula. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand. Hearty, unhurried, and very much the kind of place where someone will explain exactly where your food came from.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Wood-panelled walls and a terrace overlooking vineyards and forest set the mood at this regional Austrian restaurant tucked into the Schlosskeller estate. The kitchen leans into the seasons and the local larder, with classics like Backhenderl alongside apricot dumplings that earn their spot on the menu. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the kind of place where the staff actually know the wine list rather than just gesturing at it.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Perched among the vineyards of Gamlitz, this farm-to-table restaurant sits at an elevation that makes the terrace feel like a reward before the food even arrives. The kitchen leans on local, seasonal ingredients and classic technique, while the wine list pulls from the surrounding Styrian slopes and a little beyond. The whole thing has the warm, unhurried feel of somewhere run by people who actually like each other.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A cosy Styrian restaurant in the countryside where the kitchen pairs golden trout with Schupfnudeln and milk-fed veal with Alpine cheese and lingonberries, flavors rooted firmly in the region. The room is low-key and unfussy, and the host keeps things warm and unhurried. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand. A handful of boutique guestrooms upstairs means you can stay on and work through the wine list properly.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The Rauch siblings run their Michelin-starred fine dining room above the spa town of Bad Gleichenberg, drawing ingredients from their own pig farm and local Styrian suppliers. Tasting menus lean into creative Austrian cooking with flashes of unexpected global reference. A vine-shaded terrace softens any fine-dining formality, and the wine guidance is the kind you'll follow without regret. A casual Wirtshaus operates at lunch next door, in case commitment feels like a lot.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A winery restaurant where the cellar list runs to over 600 labels and the kitchen sources organic pork from the family's own woolly pig herd. Old and new architecture sit side by side, and a courtyard terrace softens any formality. The menu moves between hearty regional cooking and something more considered, so you can dress up or down without feeling out of place. A Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame vineyard terraces and the hills rolling out behind Leibnitz, so you're essentially eating inside a painting. This is a casual-smart restaurant where seasonal cooking leans contemporary and the wine list is long enough to warrant a trip to the glass-fronted cellar downstairs to look things over. The tiered outdoor terrace fills up fast in summer, and the service is the kind that notices without hovering.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A fifth-generation family restaurant in the Mura region, where the cooking leans hard into local tradition without becoming a folk museum. Dödoli, buckwheat toast, and prekmurska gibanica show up in forms that feel both rooted and considered. The room has the ease of a place that has never needed to try too hard, which is usually a good sign. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A narrow driveway through woods and meadows leads to a country house with stables and paddocks, which is either the setup for a fairy tale or a Michelin-starred seasonal restaurant. It's both, as it turns out. The kitchen sends out refined, regionally rooted dishes on handcrafted ceramics, and the chefs plate and serve their own food. The sommelier's wine pairings are quietly exceptional. Book a terrace table in summer.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A glass partition between the dining room and the garden folds away in summer, so the whole space becomes something close to a terrace. This is a Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant in a small Austrian market town, built around a four-to-six course set menu that leans hard on regional producers. Sturgeon with Alpine caviar or Amur carp with a paprika stew nod to the Hungarian border nearby. The wine list matches the food's regional conviction.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A Baroque manor in a park sets the scene for this Michelin-starred fine dining room, where the kitchen takes Slovenian staples and runs them through a distinctly modern lens. Tasting menus of five or seven courses sit alongside a short à la carte, and the wine list runs to over 600 labels. The polenta with beef reads like a classic until it doesn't, which is more or less the point of the whole operation.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Celje Castle looms over the valley while this country inn below quietly does its own thing: regional Slovenian cooking that leans on nearby farms for its meat, with venison holding a near-permanent spot on the menu. The wine list runs mostly local, with a small Italian detour and a vintage section that takes itself seriously. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which tracks for a place this unfussy about impressing anyone.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Terrace tables hang over the Stainzbach River, and in summer nobody gives those up without a fight. This is a chic modern restaurant in the basement of an old mill, where the kitchen builds two seasonal tasting menus, four or seven courses, from ingredients pulled largely from the surrounding Styrian countryside. The sommelier pours almost exclusively from Styria and Burgenland, and the bar lounge is a decent reason to arrive early.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Perched on a hill in the Zagorje countryside, this family-run restaurant and inn pours only from its own cellar, every label available by the glass. The menu reads like a regional primer, from mushroom-and-bacon Zagorska soup to roast veal and ricotta strudel, with homemade ice cream closing things out. Rooms and a pool make it easy to stay longer than planned. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A historic town-square building with a glass partition that folds open to the garden in summer, blurring the line between inside and out. This Austrian tavern runs two speeds: a relaxed à la carte lunch and dinner with regional classics, or a fine dining set menu in the evenings for those who call ahead. The kitchen draws on local ingredients and stays grounded in the traditions of the region, the kind of cooking that feels earned rather than performed.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A self-taught chef cooking in a medieval hilltop castle is either a recipe for pretension or a great story, and at Pavus it's the latter. This Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant sits inside Grad Tabor above Laško, where the tasting menu moves through Slovenia's larder, foraging, whole-animal cookery, and local wine, the Styrian whites in particular. In summer, the panoramic courtyard does most of the talking.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Dark walls, warm gold light, and a room small enough that the chef, Daniel Edelsbrunner, tends to bring the dishes out himself. This is a fine dining restaurant built around a single set menu, available in a shorter or longer format, with modern cooking that leans hard on seasonal and regional ingredients. The wine list follows the same logic, favoring local labels. Dress like it costs what it costs.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A koi pond and a gnarled old olive tree anchor the covered terrace at this regional Austrian wirtshaus in Unterpremstätten. Inside, the room runs modern and warm, and the kitchen leans hard into seasonality and provenance, built on traditional recipes passed through three generations of the same family. Chanterelle goulash with bread dumplings and sour cream is the kind of dish that makes you want to cancel your afternoon. A solid regional wine list rounds things out.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The garden out back doubles as a sculpture park, the work of a chef who also paints and carves stone, which tells you something about the ambitions here. This is a relaxed restaurant in the Styrian countryside, earning a Michelin Bib Gourmand for seasonal cooking built almost entirely on regional ingredients. The wine list leans Austrian, with a solid pour-by-the-glass selection, and the terrace is the kind you stay at longer than planned.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A market stall on Kaiser-Josef-Platz that happens to hold a Michelin star is the kind of thing that sounds like a punchline until you sit down. In the evenings, the chef runs a long tasting menu built almost entirely from what's being sold a few steps away, with plates that are spare and precise without being cold about it. Lunch is a lower-key affair. The front-of-house team, chef included, keeps the room warm and unstuffy.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A Michelin-starred creative restaurant tucked into Graz's pedestrian zone, Artis runs on surprise menus of four, six, or eight courses built around top-shelf international ingredients. The room is sleek and dark, the cooking modern and precise. Book the chef's table if you want to watch the kitchen work up close, which is, honestly, half the show.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The kitchen here draws inspiration from Habsburg-era recipes and court anecdotes, reimagining them as a set menu of four or eight courses at this Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant inside Graz's Parkhotel. The cooking follows the seasons and leans classic, but the plating is precise and the flavors are quietly ambitious. Chefs bring the dishes to the table themselves, which is either very charming or very intense depending on your threshold for eye contact.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A family-run fine dining room in the village center of Ligist, where the third generation is cooking creative, French-inflected tasting menus under a Michelin star. The five- or seven-course surprise format leans on unexpected contrasts, and the wine pairings are chosen with real care. Julia Mausser runs the floor with the kind of warmth that makes a multi-course meal feel less like an occasion and more like a long dinner with people who know what they're doing.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A 15-minute drive above Graz earns you a terrace with meadows rolling into the city below, which does a lot of the heavy lifting before the food arrives. This is a warm, unfussy restaurant where the kitchen leans on regional ingredients and the seasons, with à la carte alongside a six-or-seven-course surprise menu. Classic Austrian dishes anchor the menu, pancake soup and boiled beef among them. The kind of place locals treat as a reliable Sunday ritual.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A farm-to-table restaurant tucked just behind the Augarten Art Hotel, where the room keeps things unfussy and the cooking follows suit. The Michelin Bib Gourmand kitchen finds comfort in mixing miso-glazed cod with wok vegetables alongside old-school chestnut soup, which turns out to be a more coherent idea than it sounds. A sheltered terrace opens in summer, and the lunch set menu keeps the damage modest.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The name means "fortress" in Croatian, which fits: the dining room looks out over Varaždin castle, and the kitchen treats local tradition with the same seriousness. This is a traditional restaurant where the team digs into regional recipes, then rebuilds them with real technique, leaning on ingredients like Zagorje turkey, pumpkin seed oil, and local trout. In winter the fireplace does the work; in summer the terrace earns it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A modern restaurant inside a campus building that pulls off a convincing split personality: quick lunches for office workers by day, seasonal contemporary cooking by evening. The open kitchen is visible from the dining room, and the menu runs to combinations like zander fillet with beluga lentils and Brussels sprouts. The wine list leans Austrian but reaches into France, Italy, and Germany, with natural wines tucked in for good measure.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Michelin Bib Gourmand inn sitting on the market square of a small Styrian town, where Austrian classics get quiet seasonal updates without losing the plot. Trout, venison ragout, spaetzle, the kind of cooking that makes you wonder why anyone fusses more than this. The family has been running the room for generations, and the warmth shows. Book ahead, the locals already have.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Wedged between Kunsthaus Graz and the Mariahilfkirche, this neighbourhood restaurant earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand with traditional Austrian cooking that moves with the seasons. The terrace puts you square in the middle of the old town, and the room has that lived-in rustic quality that makes people linger. Organic breaded chicken and slow-cooked lamb share the menu, and the Saturday copper-pot beef is the kind of ritual that fills tables early.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The name means "barn," which is where this Michelin-starred restaurant quietly got its start. The glass-fronted dining room sits in a meadow in Hungary's Őrség region, and the kitchen leans hard into what that landscape offers, working seasonal produce into historically rooted dishes with a lot of fermenting and pickling along the way. Wines from Hungary, Austria, and Slovenia show up together, which is either geopolitics or just good sense. Forest lodges are nearby if you'd like to stay.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The former stables of an organic mountain farm, converted into a sixteen-seat dining room of wood, stone, and floor-to-ceiling meadow views, is a pretty honest statement of intent. This is a one-Michelin-star seasonal tasting menu restaurant where the vegetables, herbs, and honey come from the property itself, the goats and chickens are next door, and the veterinarian who co-owns the place is, yes, also next door.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A tiled stove warms one dining room while a sleeker, modern space sits just next door, and the kitchen plays both sides too: regional Austrian classics on the à la carte menu and a more ambitious seasonal tasting menu for the table that came prepared. This is a proper country inn in the Styrian hills, the kind where the wine list leans hard into local labels and a deli counter near the door lets you leave with something wrapped in paper.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A nineteenth-century oak farmhouse, dismantled and rebuilt inside an old orchard, is now a warm, romantic family restaurant in the Međimurje countryside. The kitchen follows the seasons and leans hard into the region: filled pastas, slow-cooked meats, and the layered cheese-and-pumpkin cake called gibanica that turns up at the end of most meals here. Local wines fill the list. The kind of place that makes you want to drive into rural Croatia more often.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A high vaulted ceiling and courtyard terrace set the tone at this polished restaurant in a Graz palace building near the city museum. The menu spans Austrian classics and international cooking, and the Wiener schnitzel arrives impeccably done, served alongside a salad of local butterhead lettuce. Window tables put the Sackstraße foot traffic on pleasant display. Service is genuinely warm without being fussy, the kind that makes a long lunch feel like a reasonable idea.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A small kitchenette anchors the centre of this minimalist modern bistro on the Lendkai, and the kitchen's output is more ambitious than the room lets on. The sharing menu leans heavily vegetarian, with meat and fish appearing when they're available, and dish combinations read like spare little poems. House-baked sourdough arrives at the start, and the natural wine list holds its own. Weekend mornings they flip to breakfast and coffee, which is a very reasonable way to ease in.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The restaurant occupies a former section of Graz's old city wall, and the vaulted medieval ceiling left intact above modern clean-lined furniture is a combination that shouldn't work but does. A regional Austrian dining room near the Hauptplatz, it runs Styrian Alpine beef, veal schnitzel, and charcoal-grilled steaks through a seasonal menu. The inner courtyard terrace fills up fast in good weather, and the team actually knows the wine list.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A restaurant dug into the side of the Schlossberg, a steep rocky hill at the center of Graz, with a terrace that looks out over the whole city. The building is an old winegrower's house, and dinner is a single surprise menu, five or seven courses, served to everyone at 7pm, so the kitchen is very much in charge. Mediterranean cooking, elegant and precise. Getting here is half the fun: funicular, mountain lift, or a hike up the stone steps.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Floor-to-ceiling windows face the whole city of Graz, and tables right up against the glass are gone before you finish asking. This casual restaurant on the Schlossberg serves seasonal Austrian cooking alongside timeless classics, with lighter lunch options if you're not committing to a full evening. The funicular drops you at the door in minutes, though walking up via the Schlossbergsteig gives you time to feel you've earned it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A medieval castle on the Sava River is already a lot to ask of a dinner reservation, and A3 leans into it fully. The restaurant sits inside the restored Rajhenburg fortress, serving surprise tasting menus of four, six, or eight courses built around local and seasonal ingredients, including trout from the family's own aquaculture operation. The cellar leans Slovenian sparkling wine, which makes the aperitif hour feel like someone planned it that way.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A regional Croatian restaurant sitting inside a working winery, with vineyard hills rolling out in every direction and a large outdoor gazebo that becomes the only sensible place to sit once the weather cooperates. The menu leans hard on local tradition, which here means grilled meats done with conviction. The Hussar's Steak, finished with house-made bacon, smoked ham, onion, and red chili, is the dish everyone seems to order first and talk about longest.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The surprise menu here comes in four, six, or eight courses, which is the kind of decision that gets harder after the first pour of wine. This fine dining restaurant in a small hotel near the Lavant river runs on regional Carinthian ingredients, handled with enough creativity that smoked trout arrives with cranberry cream rather than lemon and a shrug. Light wood, touches of green, and friendly service keep things from feeling stiff.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A farmhouse restaurant that has been in the same family for what feels like forever, tucked into the Slovenian countryside and running tasting menus built around whatever the kitchen garden and surrounding region produce. Trout, rabbit, pork with horseradish mousse, plum cream, vegetables grown out back: the cooking is rooted but not stuck. The wine list leans hard into Slovenian bottles, which turns out to be exactly the right call.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Near the Croatian border in inland Slovenia, this contemporary restaurant is built around the chef's network of suppliers drawn from across the country. The cooking is precise and modern without being showy, reworking traditional local recipes into something personal, plum extract with duck, a dessert deconstructed into something new. The wine list is extensive enough that finding a match is never a problem.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The menu here changes daily because it has to, built from whatever the garden, the river, and the surrounding forest are offering that morning. This is a farm-to-table restaurant in the Slovenian highlands, fourth-generation family-run and rooted in the Luče valley with the kind of commitment that makes the word "local" seem like an understatement. Trout from the Savinja and autumn mushrooms from the nearby woods do most of the talking.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant