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Welcome to Architectural Digesting, Our 2008 Dining Guide

By Jonathan Kauffman

April 23, 2008

Joel Kimmel

The word restaurant comes from the French verb restaurer, "to refresh or restore," but restoring the body is hardly the primary mission of restaurants these days. They're full-on entertainment venues, or rather sets for us to play out some new scene in our personal dramas. Sure, we often choose to go to a particular restaurant because we love its food, but we're also hoping to feed off—and become part of—the ambience it creates: boisterous and scenester-y. Restrained and reverent. As familiar as Grandma's den.

Dining in the wrong atmosphere will sour any occasion, whether it's Thursday lunch with a co-worker or your 10th-anniversary blowout. By the same token, when your vision of the evening lines up with the mood of the place you're eating at, you'll be talking about your meal for months to come.

So that's the organizing principle for this year's Favorite Restaurants issue: an even 100 of our writers' best-loved places divvied up by atmosphere, from "laboratory" to "living room." Pick a setting and make the scene. JONATHAN KAUFFMAN

Comments (5)

Reader Comments

1. Comment by Marianne Robinson — April 23, 2008 @ 11:55AM
I am cusious about this dining guide
2. Comment by stephan — April 24, 2008 @ 10:09AM
Is this dining guide available in actual hard copy?
3. Comment by Joe — April 24, 2008 @ 10:26AM
The Dining Guide is in hard copy in this week's issue of the Seattle Weekly! Just grab a copy from around town. What? Your favorite coffee shop doesn't have the Weekly?! Tell them they should! All they have to do is call, and they'll be a distribution point, then you'll never be without a hard copy!
4. Comment by Sondra — April 25, 2008 @ 11:04AM
Okay, without even going into the odd and useless categories I would like to quickly add omissions that I think are fairly grievous, particularly in the category of “Love Nest”: Chez Shea in The Market; Café Campagne, also in The Market; Sambar in Ballard/Phinney environs and, moving from cozy to grand, The Georgian at the Fairmont Hotel. In the “Barber Shop” area, Vios Café and Market Place is all about communal spaces, kids running from table to table and regulars exchanging greetings and hugs with the owner, Thomas. I was please to see Union made it in the listings – but why it is not in the “Laboratory” category is beyond me. Eat happily and well!
5. Comment by Donna Crowder — May 06, 2008 @ 9:33AM
I am trying to purchase a gift certificate to
a good seafood restaurant on the waterfront
for a friend who is traveling to Seattle this
summer. I would like to know how to get a
copy of the "Architectural Digesting 2008
Dining Guide"? Thanks.

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