The imitation game

Over the last years, more and more tv show decided to offer to their audience cuisine-related content. This trend was born with Masterchef, the first and most successful format to drive this kind of shows to a general audience. More and more people watched and get intrigued by high level cuisine, that somehow became part of popular culture. Did this exposition to television programs about this kind of food had an impact on consumers habit? In this work we try to answer to this question, gathering data about Michelin stars restaurants and touristic presences in Italy and estimating via an empirical analysis the effect of the former on the latter, in the months in which the TV-show Masterchef is on air. The results suggest that the gastronomic driven tourism increases while the program is on air.