CITY GUIDES | NEW ENGLAND

The Boston Michelin Guide: All the Restaurants That Made the Cut

By Eric Barton | Dec. 30, 2025

Bar Volpe

AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.

I grew up outside Boston, back when a night out in the city meant Legal Sea Foods and a cannoli from the North End. Back then, the idea that inspectors from the Michelin Guide would one day be quietly slipping into dining rooms around town felt about as likely as snow in July.

Now it is official. Michelin has released its first full guide to Boston, handing out one star, six Bib Gourmands, and 19 recommended spots across the city and its neighbors. The list reads like a snapshot of where Boston dining is right now: ambitious, technique-driven, and finally on the same global map as places like New York, Chicago, and Miami.

Now that the inspectors have spoken, this is the full picture: every Boston-area restaurant that made it into the guide, from the lone star to the Bibs to the recommended spots.

311 Omakase

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Boston’s first Michelin-starred restaurant is unexpectedly understated: a 10-seat counter on the ground floor of a South End rowhouse where chef Wei Fa Chen runs the show like a Boston Pops conductor. The room is pale wood and soft light, so the focus stays on what lands in front of you: a procession of cooked bites that might include crackly fried grouper with ponzu or a silky bowl of amadai and abalone in dashi, followed by a long run of nigiri. Much of the fish comes in from Japan, and the whole experience is less about fireworks than the quiet pleasure of watching a perfectionist work at arm’s length.

Award: One star

Bar Volpe

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If someone asks where to eat in Southie and I cannot decide between pasta and a proper bar, I send them to Bar Volpe and let Karen Akunowicz solve it. The room feels like a glam neighborhood hangout, all candles and chatter, with a glassed-in pasta room reminding you where the real work happens. Start with something fried and snacky—farro arancini or salt cod fritters—then move to house-made pastas like spaghetti al limone with Jonah crab or squid ink casarecce loaded with lobster and chili. If you somehow still have room, the tiramisu with amaro-soaked ladyfingers is the sort of dessert that makes you regret agreeing to share.

Award: Bib Gourmand

Fox & The Knife

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Fox & The Knife is where Karen Akunowicz’s pasta universe started, and it still feels like the beating heart of her little South Boston empire. On a weeknight the bar is full of regulars and parents with strollers wedged under the table, all tearing into warm focaccia stuffed with taleggio or gnocco fritto piled with mortadella before they even think about ordering pasta. You come here for big, satisfying bowls: a rich raviolo carbonara with guanciale, wild boar Bolognese over tagliatelle, or agnolotti del plin in roasted carrot butter that tastes like autumn condensed. It is noisy, unpretentious, and exactly the kind of place you wish sat at the end of your block.

Award: Bib Gourmand

Mahaniyom

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Childhood friends who grew up north of Bangkok run this small Brookline space, and you taste that sense of familiarity in shareable plates like yum som-o, a pomelo salad stacked with grilled tiger prawns, roasted cashews, and toasted coconut, or kang pu, a crab-rich red curry with rice vermicelli, cabbage, and bean sprouts for crunch. The drinks list is not an afterthought; Chompon “Boong” Boonnak’s Thai tea–Sazerac and other riffs are good enough that Michelin handed him the Exceptional Cocktails Award.

Award: Bib Gourmand

Jahunger

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Chef Subat Dilmurat grew up in a restaurant family in the northwestern China city of Ürümqi and perfected his concept in Providence before duplicating it in Cambridge. He cooks Uyghur food that leans hard on lamb, chiles, and hand-pulled noodles. The move is to bring friends and order like you are not paying: kavap, the cumin-and-chili lamb skewers; laghman noodles tangled with vegetables; the signature Jahunger noodles tossed with beef and Sichuan peppercorns; and, if you have backup, the massive chicken stew over wide, chewy noodles. It is hearty, communal food that feels like it belongs in this city in a way almost nothing else does.

Award: Bib Gourmand

Pagu

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Pagu sits on the edge of Central Square and feels a bit like a neighborhood izakaya and a Spanish tapas bar decided to share a lease. Chef Tracy Chang, a James Beard Award–recognized talent whose restaurant has also been up for Outstanding Restaurant, builds a menu that zigzags between Japan and Spain without ever feeling fussy about it. You might find silky noodles next to a jamón-friendly pintxo, or a charcoal-kissed seafood dish that would be equally at home in Barcelona or Tokyo. I tend to treat it like a greatest-hits playlist: order a spread of small plates, add something noodle-centric, and let the kitchen show off how much range it has.

Award: Bib Gourmand

Sumiao Hunan Kitchen

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In Kendall Square, Sumiao Hunan Kitchen is the rare place where you can drag a crowd that wants “Chinese” and still end up with food that actually tastes like a specific region. Founder Sumiao Chen left a career in science to open this bright, buzzy dining room, and the menu leans into Hunan heat: spicy, crunchy cucumbers that should be on every table; “Chef Zhang’s” stir-fried rice noodles strewn with egg, chives, cabbage, and pickled green beans; Grandma’s pork with firm, five-spice-scented tofu; even a General Tso’s chicken that gets its own house-made sauce instead of the usual orange goo. It is lively, affordable, and the kind of place you start plotting a return to as soon as you leave.

Award: Bib Gourmand