Thistle & Leek, the cozy Newton Centre gastropub dreamed up by married couple Kate and Trevor Smith, earned a spot as a Recommended Restaurant in the Michelin Guide’s very first Boston edition on Nov. 18. 

“We didn’t really expect it to come to Boston, so it was pretty awesome,” said Trevor. “We were very proud to represent the Boston metro area. Very proud to represent Newton. Been a dream of ours for many years to have some sort of Michelin recognition.”

A Michelin Recommendation indicates a restaurant uses quality ingredients to form cohesive and satisfactory dishes. Thistle & Leek was one of 19 Greater Boston restaurants to receive this designation. 

Six other restaurants in the area were awarded the Bib Gourmand award—an award that represents excellent value for price—and one other restaurant, 311 Omakase in the South End, earned a star. 

“A restaurant in the Recommended selection is … simply a good meal,” said Michael Ellis, International Director of the Michelin Guide Books on the Michelin Guide’s website. “It means that the inspectors have found the food to be above average, but not quite at star or Bib level.”

Both Kate and Trevor have at least 25 years in the restaurant industry, and the two are no strangers to the Michelin Guide. Kate worked as a line cook at the three-star New York restaurant Le Bernardin and was later the chef de cuisine at the Michelin-Recommended Toro in Boston’s South End. Trevor cooked and held various roles in seven Michelin-recognized restaurants, many with stars. 

Yet Kate maintained that her time in pizza restaurants was equally formative and essential to understanding the restaurant business as experience in fine dining.

“We’ve also worked at a lot more casual [places],” Kate said. “My first job was at a pizza place, and I think having that diversity of experience helped us pivot many times. There are things that you learn at a pizza place that you can bring to fine dining skills that you would never get from just working at really high-end restaurants … it builds versatility.” 

This ability to pivot was instrumental to Thistle & Leek’s opening amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Kate and Trevor’s initial plans were scrapped as the two needed to work to create high-quality takeout with social distancing rules in mind. 

“The one advantage we had was that we weren’t trying to retool a ship that was already in motion,” Trevor said. “We were able to have that forward thinking from day one.”

The couple first met at Chef Tony Maws’ former Cambridge restaurant, Craigie Street Bistrot. Ever since, they’ve discussed opening a restaurant of their own. 

“We’ve been together for 17 years, and since we first started dating, we talked about opening a restaurant,” Trevor said. 

The Bistrot’s atmosphere and mindset taught Kate and Trevor many lessons that have served their own restaurant journey. 

“[The Bistrot] is always pushing,” said Kate. “There’s always forward momentum, just continual improvement, just always trying to make what you do better than you did the day before … A lot of what working with Tony Maw at the Craigie Street Bistrot brought to us was to constantly evolve, constantly improve, and always to be cooking what’s in season.”

Thistle & Leek uses high-quality ingredients from local farms such as Allandale Farm in Newton and Verrill Farm in Concord. The menu changes with what is in season, making Kate and Trevor both hesitant to pick a favorite dish.

“It’s just so subjective,” Kate said. “[The menu] changes so often that I always hate getting pinned down to like, one or two things.”

“It’s like trying to pick your favorite child,” Trevor added. 

The lamb meatballs with a tomato-ginger curry, however, are one of the restaurant’s staples and were highlighted in Michelin’s description of the restaurant. 

This inspiration from the Bistrot, coupled with their experiences traversing across Europe for three months, culminated in the restaurant’s rotating menu and gastropub style. 

“On our honeymoon, we spent three months in Europe, kind of traveling around Europe, and we ate at a lot of neighborhood places that were run by people who worked in Michelin-starred restaurants previously,” Trevor said. “The level of cooking and the produce that they had was awesome, but it felt like it belonged, you know, in a neighborhood.”

The location for the spot in Newton Centre was born out of a happy misstep, according to Trevor.

“I did the thing I didn’t think I was supposed to, and I fell in love with the space,” Trevor said. “It’s a cool location. It’s a corner space. It has lots of windows. It was about the right size restaurant. It’s in a—I have to say—a wealthy suburb where there [was] a lot of guest potential there.”

Kate explained that the restaurant’s position in Newton affords it a degree of anonymity, enabling greater creative freedom and less external pressure than a higher-profile location.

“I think we’re just sort of outside of the radar for the sort of Boston restaurant scene, and I think it’s almost liberating, in a way,” said Kate. “We’re just cooking for ourselves, and the people who have found us love us, and it’s become very freeing.”

Thistle & Leek is closely tied to the couple’s identities—the name is an homage to their respective heritages.

“Kate has a lot of Scottish, and I have a lot of Welsh heritage,” Trevor said. “So the thistle is the national flower of Scotland, and the leek is the symbol of St. David, who’s the patron saint of Wales. So Thistle & Leek is just an expression of us.”

While the two are honored by the Michelin recognition, being able to channel their passions and interests into their restaurant brainchild is reward enough. 

“We like what we’re doing here, and I just hope that we can keep doing it,” Kate said. 

In acknowledging the restaurant’s tumultuous start, Trevor can’t help but feel like destiny played a part in the restaurant’s ability to come together. 

“By the grace of the power of this universe or something, someone was smiling at us,” Trevor said.