On a New York subway, a mother looked at her son - a student meant for something respectable - and said, "You love to eat and you're always in the kitchen. Why don't you do that?"
Junior Borges had no English yet. So before he walked into any restaurant, he sat cross-legged on a Union Square bookstore floor and read cookbooks, and learned kitchen English from cooking shows. Then the French Culinary Institute. Then thirteen years of New York kitchens - Diner, A Voce, Colicchio & Sons, executive chef at Amali.
Tyson Cole recruited him to open Uchi Dallas. Then FT33, The Joule, and on May 11, 2021, after two years of planning, Meridian, in The Village - with a kitchen strikingly similar to a sketch he had made years earlier. He served his grandmother's yucca-and-coconut cake. A Brazilian customer told him, "It tastes like home, but different," and he stopped worrying. Restaurant of the Year, twice over. A James Beard semifinalist.
In October 2023 he left. "Time had run its course." The next summer Meridian closed, and spent a year being rebuilt.
It reopened in late 2025 as a live-fire neighborhood bistro, modern American now. Eduardo Osorio, who learned fire as a boy watching his grandparents cook, moved from Los Angeles for the job. "The moment you walk in, you definitely know it's at a live fire restaurant." Regulars name the staff in their reviews - Steve, Julie, Robert. The night the hood system failed mid-service, the crew carried the burning wood outside and kept the night going.
Go on an ordinary weeknight. Order the blue-corn cornbread with brown butter and caviar, or the scallop cestini. The fire will be lit.