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In Boston, Asian restaurants shine – The Boston Globe
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.
So you’re saying there’s a chance? Despite an abysmal start to the 2026 season, the Boston Red Sox remain in the mix for a playoff spot. At least according to FanGraphs, who gives the club a 27.1% chance of reaching the postseason.
Boston’s likely path to October means winning the wild card. FanGraphs gives the Red Sox a 26.1% chance of winning an American League wild card. The team currently sits threes games back of the third and final wild card, despite a record of 25-33.
Don’t look for a division title this year in Beantown. FanGraphs gives the Red Sox a 1% chance of winning the AL East. Which makes sense, since the team currently sits in last place, 11.5 games behind the first-place Tampa Bay Rays.
But SI’s Tom Verducci and Will Laws thinks Boston has a much tougher chance of making the playoffs. In their deep dive of the postseason, the pair came up with what they call the “Line of Doom.” According to their research, a team that starts “no better than 23–31 and your season is almost over only one-third of the way through the schedule.” Here’s why.
“In the wild card era (since 1995), only one team made the postseason starting with less than 22 wins in the first 54 games, the 2005 Astros (20–34). Of the 231 teams to start 23–31 or worse, only seven made the playoffs—once every 33 times,” Verducci and Laws note.
“Since the postseason field expanded in 2022, 31 teams began 23–31 or worse. Only one, the 2024 Mets (22–32), made the playoffs. That leaves such slow starters with a 1 in 31 chance—virtually the same as the larger sample size,” the pair add.
“The fact is one-third of the season does a good job separating pretenders from contenders. And as the calendar flips to June, understand that the playoff spots won’t change very much. In the four seasons with 12 playoff spots up for grabs, teams in playoff position when May ended kept a playoff spot 73% of the time—35 of 48 teams,” Verducci and Laws conclude.
So what does this have to do with the Red Sox, you ask? It’s Boston’s record after 54 games: 23-31. The “Line of Doom.”
More MLB: Red Sox Legend Backs ‘Worried’ John Henry
What should have been a quiet off-day for the Boston Red Sox has devolved into chaos.
Chief baseball officer Craig Breslow was the subject of a profile article in The Boston Globe that didn’t paint a sunny picture of his tenure, including a tough nugget about his relationship with legend Theo Epstein. But Breslow’s harshest critic of the day was probably the father of one of his ex-players.
St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Hunter Dobbins made his second major league appearance on Sunday since being traded from the Red Sox in the deal that brought Willson Contreras to Boston. After Dobbins pitched well and featured his sinker more than expected, his father Lance Dobbins took to social media to excoriate the Red Sox and Breslow.
Lance Dobbins’ latest comments harsher than the first
We covered Lance Dobbins’ initial comments from late Sunday night that seemed to be directed at the Red Sox organization already on Boston Red Sox On SI. But on Monday evening, the elder Dobbins reentered the fray to absolve pitching coach Andrew Bailey of any blame, effectively throwing Breslow under the bus.
When asked if Breslow replacing Chaim Bloom as chief baseball officer led to Hunter throwing less sinkers and fewer four-seam fastballs in the Red Sox organization, Lance responded with this:
Yes! In Bailey’s defense he wanted the addition, but people behind computers make those decisions. The coaching staff is literally working with one hand tied behind their backs. Driveline is the answer to everything, but winning games! Ask yourself, why are so many of our guys…
— Lance Dobbins (@lpdobbins) June 1, 2026
“Yes! In Bailey’s defense he wanted the addition, but people behind computers make those decisions. The coaching staff is literally working with one hand tied behind their backs. Driveline is the answer to everything, but winning games!
“Ask yourself, why are so many of our guys always injured (pitchers and position players), it’s not by pure bad luck. Pitchers are having constant issues and hitters are always hurting hands and wrist. It’s not a league wide problem. It has to be fixed or we’ll never win because half of our starters will always be on the IL.”
That last point has to hit home for the Red Sox because star outfielder Roman Anthony (who debuted in the majors a couple of months after Hunter Dobbins) has now had two long-lasting injuries that occurred on swings — an oblique strain in September that ended his season prematurely, and a partially torn finger ligament that has held him out of action since May 4, with no end in sight.
Monday just wasn’t a good day in the public relations department for the Red Sox front office, or for Breslow in particular. But it’s worth noting that Dobbins has only made two appearances in a Cardinals uniform, allowing four earned runs in eight innings, taking a loss and earning a save.
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Seasonal train rides, Bristol’s historic Fourth of July celebration, Duck Tour discounts, and more.
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I hope everyone had a lovely holiday weekend. We visited friends in Wells, Maine and then explored nearby Ogunquit (recently named the best beach town in New England by Boston.com readers). Though the weather wasn’t the best, outdoor dining was still hopping and the streets were full of people. It’s always a good vibe in Ogunquit.
This week, I’m writing about two New England towns named among the most welcoming in America, a first-of-its-kind remote terminal for Logan Airport, the oldest continuous 4th of July celebration in the nation, Boston Duck Tour discounts, and more.
These New England towns roll out the welcome mat
If you’re looking for a happy getaway, two New England towns were just named on a World Atlas list of 12 of the most welcoming towns in America: Bar Harbor, Maine and Burlington, Vermont. Both are hosting free festivals and other community events this summer, adding even more reasons for a Maine or Vermont escape this season.
Need a ride? Consider a seasonal train
I’m a big fan of train travel because it’s relaxing and stress free. The CapeFlyer between Boston and Cape Cod resumed this past weekend and the Berkshire Flyer between the Berkshires and New York City starts back up on June 12 (with expanded service).
Attend the oldest continuous 4th of July celebration in America
Believe it or not, Independence Day is just around the corner and one of the best celebrations in America is in Bristol, R.I., according to USA Today. The publication just named the Bristol Fourth of July Celebration among the best 4th of July celebrations in the nation (fun fact: this will be its 241st year).
Travel tips:
- Logan Airport passengers flying JetBlue and Delta Air Lines can soon skip airport security lines and go straight to their gate by using a first-of-its-kind remote terminal in Framingham, opening June 1.
- Celebrate America’s 250th birthday at Weir Farm National Historical Park in Ridgefield, Conn., the only national park dedicated to American painting, on June 14 (Flag Day) by attending the free event Art is Revolutionary. Guests will enjoy live music, plein air demonstrations, open house tours, refreshments, and art making activities.
Deals and steals:
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- Celebrate the 140th anniversary of Basin Harbor Resort & Boat Club in Vergennes, Vermont by booking the Summer Starts Early package, which takes 25% off weekdays and 10% off weekends on three-night stays taking place through June 18.
- Taking a Boston Duck Tour? Save up to $10 per ticket on tours departing before 10 a.m. by using the discount code EARLYDUCK. The discount is valid for online purchases only.
- Traveling by train? Save up to 60% off eight tickets on Amtrak when booking Amtrak Share Fares by using the code V291 on the Amtrak app. A two-day advance purchase is required.
I’ll leave you with this photo I took of the sunrise in Wells, Maine.
Where have you traveled lately? Please share your photos by sending them to [email protected] and they may be featured in an upcoming Scenic Six newsletter.
Whether you’re traveling this week or planning your next escape, enjoy the journey.
— Kristi
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