Two people, 49 places a city, no ratings anywhere.
We travel constantly, eat even more, and are tired of being let down by 4.5-star places that turn out to be nothing special. It's never about the price. It's about whether it's worth it.
How this started
We've both called Amsterdam home for four-plus years now, having lived in a handful of cities and countries before that. Every trip produced the same thing: shared folders and spreadsheets full of “go here, skip that.”
Friends kept asking for the list, so we turned it into a website. The rule we gave ourselves was the hard part: every city gets 49 places, and not one more. Adding somewhere means retiring somewhere else.
Each place comes with one line on why we'd send you there, and sometimes a longer note in the notebook. Then a day plan, so you don't have to assemble coffee, lunch, dinner and last call yourself.
The questions we get
- Why 49?
- Round numbers feel like a quota to fill. 49 forces us to be picky. If a place makes the cut, we'd send a friend there tonight. If it doesn't, we just liked something else more.
- How do we pick?
- We pay, we go back, we argue about it. If we keep returning, or miss it when we're not there, it's in. No press dinners, no invites, no shortcuts.
- How often does it change?
- Whenever we find something new, or stop going back, the list changes. Kind of seasonal — a city is never finished.
- What we don't do
- No star ratings. No algorithm. No sponsored placements, ever. Nobody can buy their way onto a list of 49.