One of Boston’s Best Restaurants Is in the Suburbs, Says One Critic

Owning the Neighborhood

The Boston Globe’s Devra First heads to Newton to review Buttonwood, the latest restaurant from the team behind Sycamore and Little Big Diner, also in Newton. “They saw the need for good restaurants here, and the opportunity that presented, and they went about not just filling it but owning it,” First writes of the team that has made Buttonwood a destination, and not just for suburban diners.

Notably, the restaurant serves kid-friendly meals that look “like something you might serve your kids at home, except you don’t have to make it.” For adults, there’s much to enjoy, including a cheeseburger with a “thick, juicy patty” and a dish of snap peas and radicchio “buried in a blizzard of shaved ricotta salata and lemon zest.”

Overall, First rates the restaurant three stars out of four (“excellent”), writing: “It is Buttonwood’s ability to truly serve the neighborhood — to get it where it lives — that makes the restaurant so successful.”

“Infectious Joy and Fire and Soul”

For The Improper Bostonian, MC Slim JB is delighted to break out of “the ennui that inevitably accompanies the umpteenth iteration of Fusiony Small Plates” that a professional restaurant critic must eat. He has found one of “the rare places that remind you why you first became an obsessive food nerd”: the tiny new Peruvian restaurant in Somerville’s Union Square, Celeste.

The ceviches are “incredible,” with “precisely balanced flavors,” and the causas, cold potato-based terrines, strike an “exquisite” tension between “gentle hominess, cool temperature, and vivid capsaicin heat.” And there are desserts, too; they’re “terrific.”

“Run, don’t walk” to the restaurant that’s making “a jaded critic shed a tear of bliss.” (And get a reservation, because there are very few seats.)

Rachel Leah Blumenthal/Eater Boston

• Want to Eat at One of Boston’s Best New Restaurants? Head to the Suburbs [BG]
• A Bit of Heaven [IB]