Dakzen

Highland Kitchen has been a fixture of the Somerville dining scene long enough to have developed the kind of reputation that neighbourhood restaurants either earn or quietly lose — and by most accounts, it has held its ground.

FUKI Japanese Cuisine occupies a particular niche in the Union Square ecosystem that's harder to pull off than it sounds: sushi that takes the cooking seriously without pricing out the Somerville regulars who actually live here.

Ana Sortun's Somerville mezze outpost has developed a reputation as one of the Boston area's more genuinely joyful dining experiences — and joyful here means something specific.

Here's the thing about The Neighborhood Restaurant on Bow Street: the Borges family has been feeding Somerville, and the city literally named the square outside after founder Mario Borges.

Dalí has been running the same warmly disheveled Spanish party in Somerville since the late 1980s, which is an eternity in restaurant years and the clearest possible signal that the room is doing something right.