The house
Seven years, one seating .
Meridian opened in 2019 on a single idea that has not moved since: twenty-two people, the same seven courses, the same hour, and nothing hidden about how it is done.
The kitchen
Duarte Salgado
Chef-patron, since 2019
Duarte trained in kitchens in Lisbon and the Alentejo before opening Meridian at twenty-nine, on the idea that a menu could be no more than a list of what had arrived that morning, rather than a promise made months in advance.
He is usually the one who comes out between the fourth course and the fifth to say where everything came from, not as a performance but as an answer to the question every table asks anyway.
Why twenty-two
The number was never the limitation .
Twenty-two is what the room and a single pass can do properly at once. A larger room would mean a second seating, a second version of the night, and a kitchen cooking two menus instead of one.
It is also why the book opens sixty days out and tends to close within an afternoon, and why a name left against a full night still has roughly one chance in five of finding a table before the date arrives.
The room
A converted tasca that never pretended to be anything else.
The dining room keeps the shape it had as a neighbourhood tasca on Rua da Escola Politécnica, with the kitchen open enough that the pass is never out of earshot. Nothing was added to make it feel more expensive than it is; the money went into the produce and the people instead, and seven years on that is still where it goes.