LIST: The Michelin Guide's Bay Area restaurants with great food at affordable prices

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The Michelin dining guide recognizes the finest restaurants in the world, but 20 Bay Area restaurants received another honor from the distinguished culinary guide.

The restaurants were named 2021 Bib Gourmands, which is defined by Michelin as "restaurants (that) offer a full menu of a starter, main course and dessert, making it possible to order two courses and a glass of wine or dessert for around $40 or less (tax and gratuity not included)."

The 2021 California guide named 45 new Bib Gourmands and 20 of those new restaurants are near the Bay Area (including Sacramento).

Michelin did not hand out any new honors in 2020 due to the pandemic, so these honors are the first since 2019.

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Here's a list of the restaurants:

• ASA South (Los Gatos)

• Dumpling Home (San Francisco)

• FOB Kitchen (Oakland)

• FolkTable (Sonoma)

• Horn Barbecue (Oakland)

• iTalico (Palo Alto)

• Khom Loi (Sebastopol)

• Los Carnalitos (Redwood City)

• New Dumpling (El Cerrito)

• Nixtaco (Sacramento)

• Range Life (Livermore)

• Routier (San Francisco)

• Spinning Bones (Alameda)

• Taquería El Paisa (Oakland)

• Tacos Oscar (Oakland)

• Tony's Seafood (Marshall)

• Top Hatters Kitchen (San Leandro)

• Um.ma (San Francisco)

• Valley (Sonoma)

• Yue Huang (Sacramento)

Being named to the list is one of the top honors a restaurant can receive.

ABC7 News stopped by ASA Los Gatos and Los Carnalitos in the South Bay to share the news that they made the 2021 Bib Gourmands list.

ASA Los Gatos has California style food with influences from Spain and Italy. The proprietor Andrew Welch says it is all about honest and integrity when serving meals to their community.

Welch tells us this honor means a lot to his staff.

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"It's always wonderful to be recognized, we work very hard and we care about what we do," Welch said. We're taking no shortcuts here. The level of family with the people that are employed here is deep, so it's going to mean a lot for them. It's just such an honor that we pulled together, stayed together and focused on making a high quality product as we were walking it out to trunks being popped and pulled up. The level of support from the community was amazing which gives us even more energy coming out of it to stay here, be here and go for many years more."

Los Carnalitos is a food truck in Redwood City that made the 2021 list.

Guests lined up at lunchtime to try their famous al pastor tacos served on handmade tortillas.

The restaurant offers up authentic flavors to an area that didn't feature anything like this before according to owner Margarita Garcia.

She was happy to learn Los Carnalitos made the list.

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"We were looking for something like that when we opened our first food truck," Garcia said. "We couldn't find anything authentic like in Mexico City, so that's why we decided to bring this here to all the Californians. It definitely means a lot. We've been working really hard for this and we are just blessed to be on this list."

Ending up on this list doesn't happen by accident.

The owners tell us it takes a certain amount of heart and pride to bring the best food to our area.

Even after such a difficult year on restaurants in 2020, they continue to do their best for themselves and the community.

The Michelin Guide will hand out their new stars, the top honor for restaurants, on Sept. 28.