No one—other than obsessive gourmands—goes out to dinner just for the food. We go for the mood, for the company, to realize some small part of our life’s mission.

There’s always a purpose behind a meal out, whether it’s entertaining your parents-in-law from Tulsa or drowning your woes in a bowl of noodles. With that thought in mind, we offer you here Seattle Weekly’s annual list of favorite restaurants, organized according to the 22 most statistically significant human-restaurant interactions.

Remember, these are just our current favorites. Pick up the paper next week, and you might find a new one.