Of course, anyone who eats in these parts doesn’t need an international dining guide to tell them so. It’s been this way, and it’s only getting better. But Michelin’s choices highlight the fact, showcasing the excellence of Asian restaurants across a spectrum of cultures and concepts, from family-run establishments serving affordable fare to omakase restaurants questing after perfection.

Of the 26 local restaurants included in the guide, 10 serve Asian-inspired food and/or are Asian-owned.

One Boston restaurant received a Michelin star: 311 Omakase, which serves Japan-inspired tasting menus created by a chef, Wei Fa Chen, originally from Fujian, China.

The restaurant offers a special experience, like visiting a speakeasy created by a Zen monk who is absolutely obsessed with food. Diners arrive at a basement apartment of a brick row house in the South End — is this the right place? — then pass through an incense-scented entryway to a 10-seat wood counter in a small, serene dining room. Chen is slicing fish, so close to customers one could reach out a finger and touch the blade of his extremely sharp knife (not recommended). Carrie Ko, the manager and Chen’s wife, narrates the experience course by course. Each dish, each ingredient, has its own story. A meal here couldn’t be more intimate, and it is easy to see what the Michelin inspectors saw in 311.

Six area restaurants received the Bib Gourmand designation, which Michelin uses to recognize restaurants that offer both quality and value. Four of these serve Asian cuisine.

In Brookline, Mahaniyom was recognized for the originality and deliciousness of Thai dishes like pomelo salad and crab curry. Co-owner Chompon “Boong” Boonnak also received an award for the restaurant’s cocktails. Cambridge made a strong showing: Jahunger, a Uyghur restaurant where hand-pulled noodles are a particular strength, was named for its vibrant, nourishing, honest cooking. Inspectors found Pagu, where the menu is inspired by Asia as well as Spain (think black cod croquetas with Thai chile alioli, braised pork belly bao, and laksa made with invasive green crabs), both fun and thoughtful. And Sumiao Hunan Kitchen was praised for its regional specialties as well as the care it takes with core Chinese menu dishes.

(The other two Bib Gourmands, chef Karen Akunowicz’s Bar Volpe and Fox & the Knife, were both Italian — a cuisine that pulled its own weight, with seven restaurants included in the guide.)

Michelin also recommended Asian-owned tasting-menu restaurant Lenox Sophia in South Boston; Vietnam-inspired Nightshade Noodle Bar in Lynn; Downtown Crossing Korean restaurant Somaek; a second omakase restaurant, Wa Shin, in Bay Village; and Chinese hand-pulled noodle shop Zhi Wei Cafe, near South Station.

To compare with another small city for context: Philadelphia’s guide, also in its first year, included 33 restaurants. Just two of them serve Asian cuisine, both specializing in Japanese cuisine. The cultural culinary dominance might be less striking somewhere like California, where the population is 17 percent Asian. In Boston, it’s about half that.

I know: Enough with the Michelin talk already. An arbitrary guide created by dining experts who parachute in fails to capture the lived daily reality of any city’s culinary scene. It honors only the present moment, without regard for restaurants that show up consistently over long spans of time or acknowledgment that an excellent kitchen can have an off night. It overlooks so many places that the people who live here love and patronize in force.

But the guide does matter in a few clear ways.

One obvious one: It is a driver of tourism dollars, thus the sponsorship of Michelin’s presence by Meet Boston and the Cambridge Office for Tourism. According to a 2025 Ernst & Young study, 60 percent of international travelers under the age of 34 use the Michelin Guide when picking which restaurants to visit. Expats also may invest more weight in Michelin’s opinions: “I’m getting more Europeans who are living in Massachusetts. They are more in tune with Michelin and more accustomed to it,” said Lenox Sophia chef-owner Shi Mei.

Boston is light years beyond baked beans and chowder, things we are known for but rarely eat. Maybe that’s news, though, for the rest of the world. Michelin’s choices can help revise, even in a small way, how people see this city, rewriting stale narratives about what Boston is today. (Home of the bean curd and ginger-scallion cod, apparently!) If observers are surprised to find a more open, diverse portrait of a place with a reputation for clannishness and racism, welcome to 2026, and also please help yourself to a heaping plate of what this country is still truly, essentially about, despite the dangers it now poses to those very international travelers who tend to follow Michelin.

Because behind the guide are stories.

Wei Fa Chen came to Boston from China because he had family here. He worked at takeout-oriented places that belonged to friends and relatives, as well as Ruka, the Japanese-Peruvian restaurant downtown. Then he moved to New York for a chance to work at the Michelin-starred omakase restaurant Masa. During the pandemic, he came back and decided to stay. Now Boston has a Michelin-starred omakase restaurant of its own.

Two childhood friends from Phetchabun province in Thailand came here to study, at Boston University and Northeastern, and discovered a passion for the restaurant business. Smuch Saikamthorn and Boonnak became partners in Mahaniyom, where they conjure up the flavors and dishes they were missing from home, and give us the chance to fall in love with them too. Boonnak’s experience bartending at Shojo in Chinatown was formative, helping to inspire Mahaniyom’s award-winning cocktail program, as well as the one at the team’s sister bar, Merai.

Sumiao Chen, a doctor and scientist from Hunan, China, earned two degrees here: a master’s in FDA regulatory affairs and health policy from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Science, and a certificate in French culinary arts from Le Cordon Bleu. In 2017, she opened Sumiao Hunan Kitchen, bringing in chefs from Michelin-starred Chinese restaurants in other cities, and providing these parts with a rare taste of Hunanese cuisine.

When doors are closed, when people can’t move freely for work, education, family, or opportunity, stories like these are never written into existence. The Michelin results are a reminder of how much richer we all are for them — and how much better we eat.

Devra First can be reached at devra.first@globe.com. Follow her on Instagram @devrafirst.

The Boston University Terriers host the Colgate Raiders Monday at 6 p.m. ET. Colgate took down Boston University 80-79 in overtime on Jan. 24.

Colgate vs. Boston University will air on CBS Sports, and streams live on fuboTV (free trial).

What: Men’s college basketball regular season

Who: Colgate Raiders vs. Boston University Terriers

When: Monday, Feb. 16, 2026

Where: Case Gym, Boston, Massachusetts

Time: 6 p.m. ET

TV: CBS Sports Network

Live stream: fuboTV (free trial), DIRECTV (free trial)

The Colgate men’s basketball team mounted a furious second-half rally Saturday but couldn’t complete an 18-point comeback, falling to Navy 84-80 in overtime at Cotterell Court.

Jalen Cox delivered a game-high 30 points along with seven assists, five rebounds, and three steals for the Raiders. The guard forced overtime by scoring the final four points of regulation, including two free throws in the last eight seconds that tied the game at 77-77. Cox also disrupted a potential game-winning shot attempt by Navy’s Austin Benigni at the regulation buzzer.

Navy dominated early, building a 36-18 lead in the first half with help from three 3-pointers by Jordan Pennick. The Midshipmen took a 48-28 advantage into halftime.

The Raiders clawed back after intermission. Cox sparked the comeback by scoring or assisting on Colgate’s first 17 second-half points, trimming the deficit to 51-45 with more than 15 minutes remaining. Back-to-back 3-pointers from Kyle Carlesimo later knotted the score at 55-55, and Andrew Alekseyenko’s triple gave Colgate its biggest lead at 61-59 with 8:47 left.

Alekseyenko finished with 19 points and 10 rebounds for his fourth double-double of the season. His five 3-pointers set a career high. Josh Ahayere added 12 points and five rebounds, while Carlesimo scored nine points.

The overtime period became a defensive battle, with both teams combining to shoot just 1-for-10 from the field. Alekseyenko missed a go-ahead 3-point attempt with 10 seconds remaining, and Benigni sealed Navy’s victory at the free-throw line.

The defeat ended Colgate’s 13-game winning streak against Navy and marked the Midshipmen’s first victory at Cotterell Court since January 2016. The Raiders have lost four conference games this season by a combined 10 points and dropped to 1-3 in overtime contests.

BOSTON — More than a decade before he became the country’s first president, George Washington was leading a critical campaign in the early days of the American Revolution. The Siege of Boston was his first campaign as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and, in many ways, set the stage for his military and political successes — celebrated on Presidents Day.

Following the Battles of Lexington and Concord, militias had pinned down the British in Boston in April 1775. The Continental Congress, recognizing the need for a more organized military effort, selected Washington to lead the newly-formed army.

What was the Siege of Boston

On this day 250 years ago, Washington would have been nearing the end of an almost yearlong siege that bottled up as many as 11,000 British troops and hundreds more loyalists. The British were occupying Boston at the time, and the goal of the siege was to force them out.

A critical decision made by Washington was sending Henry Knox, a young book seller, to Fort Ticonderoga in New York to retrieve dozens of cannons. The cannons, transported hundreds of miles in the dead of winter, were eventually used to fire on British positions. That contributed to the decision by the British, facing dwindling supplies, to abandon the city by boat on March 17, 1776.

Historians argue the British abandoning their position, celebrated in Boston as Evacuation Day, rid the city of loyalists at a critical time, denied the British access to an important port and gave patriots a huge morale boost.

“The success of the Siege of Boston gave new life and momentum to the Revolution,” Chris Beagan, the site manager at Longfellow House in Cambridge, a National Historic Site that served as Washington’s headquarters during the American Revolution. “Had it failed, royal control of New England would have continued, and the Continental Army likely would have dissolved.”

How the siege shaped Washington

The siege was also a critical test for Washington. A surveyor and farmer, Washington had been out of the military for nearly 20 years after commanding troops for the British during the French and Indian War. His successful campaign ensured Washington remained the commander-in-chief for the remainder of the revolution.

Doug Bradburn, president of George Washington’s Mount Vernon, said Washington took the first steps to creating a geographically diverse army that included militiamen from Massachusetts to Virginia and, by the end of the war, a fighting force with significant Black and Native American representation. It was the most integrated military until President Harry S. Truman’s desegregated the armed forces in 1948, he said.

Washington, a slave owner most of life who depended on hundreds of slaves on his Mount Vernon estate, was initially opposed to admitting formerly enslaved and free Black soldiers into the army. But short of men, Washington came to realize “there are free Blacks who want to enlist and he needs them to keep the British from breaking out” during the siege, Bradburn said.

Ridding Boston of the British also turned Washington into one of the country’s most popular political figures.

“He comes to embody the cause in a time before you have a nation, before you have a Declaration of Independence, before you’re really sure what is the goal of this struggle,” Bradburn said. “He becomes the face of the revolutionary movement.”

Commanding the military more than eight years also prepared Washington for the presidency, Pulitzer Prize-winning military historian Rick Atkinson said. “Perhaps most important, it gave him a sense that Americans could and should be a single people, rather than denizens of thirteen different entities.”

Myths of Washington

His rise to prominence also led to plenty of myths about Washington, many which persist to this day.

One of the most popular is the cherry tree myth. It was invented by one of Washington’s first biographers, according to George Washington’s Mount Vernon, who created the story after his death. Supposedly, a 6-year-old Washington took an ax to a cherry tree and admitted as much when caught by his father, famously saying “I cannot tell a lie … I did cut it with my hatchet.”

The second one is the wooden teeth myth. It was rumored that Washington had wooden dentures and scholars, well into the 20th century, were quoted as saying his false teeth were made from wood. Not true. He never wore wooden dentures, instead using those with ivory, gold and even human teeth.

More than a statesman

During his lifetime, Washington had a myriad of pursuits. He was known as an innovative farmer, according to the George Washington’s Mount Vernon, and an advocate for Western expansion, buying up to 50,000 acres of land in several Mid-Atlantic states. After returning to Mount Vernon, he built a whiskey distillery that became one of the largest in the country.

His connection to slavery was complicated. He advocated for ending slavery, and his will called for freeing all the slaves he owned after the death of his wife, Martha Washington. But he didn’t own all the slaves at Mount Vernon so he could’t legally free all of them.

Celebrating Presidents Day

For fans of George Washington, Presidents Day is their Super Bowl. Originated to celebrate Washington’s birthday, which falls on Feb. 22, the holiday has become associated with good deals at the mall. Still, there are plenty of places celebrating all things Washington on this day.

There will be a wreath-laying ceremony at Washington’s tomb at Mount Vernon, and there will be a Continental Army encampment. There will be a parade honoring Washington in Alexandria, Virginia, and, in Laredo, Texas, a monthlong celebration features a carnival, pageants, an air show and jalapeno festival.