Newton has its first Michelin-recommended restaurant.

Thistle & Leek is among 26 Greater Boston restaurants featured in the new Michelin Guide Boston 2025. The British-inspired gastropub in Newton Centre, which opened in 2020, is the only Newton restaurant in Michelin’s first-ever Boston dining guide.

Thistle & Leek—a “true neighborhood gem” with “a kitchen that doesn’t cut corners,” says Michelin’s entry—is the effort of chef-owners Kate and Trevor Smith, who have been together for 17 years.

“It’s a long-standing, worldwide, highly respected guide, so it means a lot to be part of it,” Kate, 42, said. “We’re just hoping it keeps us nice and busy, and a place that people want to work.”

Michelin’s selection process is “very secretive,” Kate said, and the restaurant’s mention in the guide came as a surprise. Michelin inspectors dine anonymously and pay for their own meals to fly under the radar and keep their opinions independent.

A note sent to Thistle & Leek’s general information email invited Kate and Trevor to the Michelin Guide Northeast Cities Ceremony in Philadelphia on Nov. 18.

“We showed up to the ceremony not really knowing what to expect at all,” Kate said. “It was pretty amazing to be on the stage with a group of extremely talented chefs and just to be recommended by Michelin.”

Recognition from Michelin is a “huge honor,” Kate said, but accolades were never the goal for Thistle & Leek.

“We’ve never done any of what we do with the hopes of getting that recognition,” she said. “[Michelin is] looking for people who are true to themselves, who are cooking what means something to them, cooking something that is inspiring to them.”

This warm and comforting dish is one of many at Thistle & Leek in Newton. Photo by Drew Katz

Trevor, 43, said he thinks Michelin values unique stories and themes in the restaurants it recognizes.

“Our food definitely has a personality and a style in and of itself,” he said. “There’s a classical European theme that runs through it, and that is reflective of our travels and who we are as people and where we’ve cooked previously.”

Thistle & Leek was inspired most by the couple’s honeymoon, Trevor said. During three months traveling across Europe, they ate at a handful of neighborhood restaurants run by people who had worked previously in Michelin-starred establishments—gastropubs in England, bistros in France. 

The restaurant’s name is an ode to the couple’s ancestry. The thistle is the national flower of Scotland, where much of Kate’s ancestry is from, and the leek is a symbol of Wales, where much of Trevor’s ancestry is from, Kate said.

Thistle & Leek’s small-plates format was born from Trevor’s experience cooking at Coppa, an Italian small-plates enoteca in the South End, and Kate’s at Toro, a South End tapas restaurant. Toro also earned a recommendation in the new Boston Michelin Guide.

“Both of us have come from fine-dining backgrounds, where tasting menus were king,” Trevor said. “In a way, small plates are that tasting menu, slightly shifted.”

Kate and Trevor met working at a French fine-dining restaurant, the now-closed Craigie Street Bistro in Cambridge. Owning a restaurant together had been “a goal for a long time,” Trevor said, before they opened Thistle & Leek in Newton Centre in September 2020.

“Working together is hard,” Kate said. “We see each other all the time, but it’s also in the context of the stress of the day-to-day work. But we also can’t imagine doing anything else.”

This is the first time Michelin has recognized Boston with its own dining guide. The South End’s 311 Omakase, a Japanese restaurant, earned the city its first and only Michelin Star.

Michelin released its first North American guide in 2005 for New York and has since expanded its guides for cities and regions across the continent, including Chicago, Toronto and the American South. Its highest award is the Michelin Star, marking exceptional cuisine, but it also distinguishes restaurants as “recommended.”

The arrival of Michelin in Boston is a push for Boston-area restaurants to “up their game and make us a more recognizable city,” Trevor said. It gives restaurants a feat to aspire to and keeps those on the guide determined to return next year.

Thistle & Leek is one of three restaurants on the Boston guide not located in Boston or Cambridge. The others are Mahaniyom, a Thai restaurant in Brookline, and Nightshade Noodle Bar, a French- and Vietnamese-inspired seafood restaurant in Lynn.

Newton is a “perfect spot” between Boston and the MetroWest suburbs, Kate said.

“We have a lot of loyal regulars, faces we see all the time. It really feels like a neighborhood restaurant, and this neighborhood has been very good to us,” she said.

Thistle & Leek is already experiencing the effects of the Michelin nod. Reservations have spiked, weekends are booked until the end of the year, and a boost in applicants looking to work in a Michelin-lauded kitchen, Trevor said.

Regardless of the Michelin nod, Trevor and Kate are engaged in a “continual process of always trying to up our game,” he said. Ultimately, Thistle & Leek’s goal remains unchanged.

“The fact that they, out of the blue, recognized us for doing what we do every day, I think that’s it,” Trevor said. “We just keep doing what we do every day to be included next year.”

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This story is part of a partnership between the Newton Beacon and the Boston University Department of Journalism.