Hoi An lanterns hang sparsely throughout the venue. Dancers glide across the stage in silk tunics. Rows of Bánh Tét, Vietnamese rice cakes enjoyed during Lunar New Year, line display tables. And nearby, inflatable horses and a miniature stable invite children to pose for photos — fitting the Year of the Horse theme.  

The Lunar New Year — known as Tết in Vietnam — is one of the most significant holidays across several Asian countries and among diaspora communities worldwide.

Organized by the Vietnamese American Community of Massachusetts and the New England Intercollegiate Vietnamese Student Association, Tết in Boston 2026 remains the region’s largest Vietnamese Lunar New Year festival. On Sunday, it filled the Menino Convention & Exhibition Center in South Boston, a space nearly the size of a football field, said Christina Trần, the festival’s decorations director. 

For months leading up to the event, Trần and her decorations committee hosted weekend workshops to craft decorations and prepare the venue. The work, she said, created unique opportunities for connections. 

“It has allowed a lot of people to come together, especially different generations,” she said, gesturing toward her decorations adviser, Khánh Bùi, who was born and raised in Vietnam.

Planning began last summer with selecting a new venue, said co-director Hannah Nguyen. Although the festival is held annually, this was its first year at the Menino Center. 

In previous years, the smaller spaces required a two-day format, but the larger venue allowed organizers to consolidate into a single day and opened the festival to more attendees, Nguyen said. 

“This is one day a year where people in the Vietnamese community all gather together, and it’s a safe space for everyone,” said co-director Linda Pham. “It’s not only people of Vietnamese descent; people who are from different ethnicities [and] cultural backgrounds come here, and everyone is able to celebrate as one.”

For attendees like Quang Vu Nguyen and his 2-year-old daughter, the festival offered a cultural connection. 

“It’s more a culture show for our family,” he said. “Especially for my daughter growing up here, [it gives her] a taste of the culture of Vietnam back home.”

As a second-generation Vietnamese American whose parents immigrated to the United States, Nguyen said events like this are essential. 

“You don’t get too many opportunities like this,” he said. “You could probably go a whole year and not go to any Vietnamese events, but I do think it’s important for [my daughter] to kind of see it, understand it, kind of just be immersed in it.” 

Tết in Boston also showcased traditional Vietnamese arts. 

Trang Tran, a Boston resident, ran a calligraphy booth with help from her daughter, Thien Nguyen, who translated for her mother. In Vietnam, calligraphers traditionally sit along busy streets during the New Year, writing personalized poems and wishes for passersby, Nguyen explained. 

“Culturally, it’s really important,” Nguyen said, pointing to her mother at work. “There’s fun stuff here like games and food, but we need something for the culture and art of the Vietnamese people.”

Vivian Le, a Massachusetts resident, displayed and sold Ao Dài, the traditional Vietnamese dresses worn during holidays, weddings, and formal celebrations. Some were handmade, while others were shipped from her family in Vietnam, she said. 

Le said she attends the festival each year to “bring out the culture” through traditional dresses. She said this year’s event felt more connected than in the past — thanks to the larger, single-floor venue. 

“This year, we are all together, all in one floor,” she said. “I really like it this year because it’s bigger.” 

Students also participated, including UMass Boston’s Vietnamese Student Association. 

Hao Truong, a senior at UMass Boston and vice president of VSA, said members hosted games for children and sold merchandise during the festival. 

The group aims to promote Vietnamese culture both on campus and in surrounding neighborhoods like Dorchester. Within the Dorchester neighborhood, Boston’s Little Saigon district serves as a cultural and commercial hub — home to roughly 75% of the city’s Vietnamese American population. 

For Truong, the event was also personal. 

“I think it’s a good way for everybody just to get together, especially for New Year’s, which is all about family and connection,” Truong said.

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.