the idea

Every city has restaurants that don't need you. They've been full for years, decades maybe. The owner knows half the room by name. The menu is one page, as it always was. Nobody asked them to change it. And nobody will. You won't find these places on a best-of list. You find them because someone who lives there takes you.

seated with boris documents those places. Each entry starts with a local: an artist, a journalist, an architect, someone with a specific restaurant they've been going back to for years. They take me there. I meet the person who built it. We eat. I write an honest take. It doesn't change after the owner reads it.

— Boris

I have a table and a local who knows the place better than I do. Food. Atmosphere. Service. Each out of 10, plus an overall that is mine alone, not an average. No guide would take me somewhere they didn't like. That narrows the scale. Everything here was worth sitting down for, but a 7 and a 9 are not the same meal.