I thought I would be a good person and actually promote Restaurant Week this year. This is mainly because I secretly found out about it last week, and made my reservations early before the meandering herd could.
My three for the year
Bijoux (with sweet Kerry, YEAH!!)
Steel
York Street
I haven't been to Steel in ages and was intrigued how they would be at restaurant week. They were pretty easy to get into. York Street is a pain in the butt, but they have the best restaurant week in town. They let you pick from the regular menu. No special menu or anything. Not like Nobu two years ago whose 3rd course was ice cream. Totally a rip off!
Other ones I would suggest:
Lanny's
Fearings
Hectors
Abacus
How else do you get a good meal for $35 and most of the money goes to charity!!
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Those should all be fun. We so far have reservations at Abacus, Hibiscus, Kenny's, Stephan Pyle's and Craft.
I'm thinking about putting Bijooux in the mix.
It's a lot in two weeks but like you said, it's cheaper than usual and goes to charity.
Well, I spoke to soon. We couldn't get past the York Street voicemail. So, instead we are doing salum. You have some good ones. Get the lobster shooters at Abacus!
are the lobster shooters part of the fixed menu cause homie can't afford the full menu!
Traditionally, the lobster shooters are the bonus Central Market 4th course at Abacus during Restaurant Week.
I work in one of the aforementioned restaurants and I urge everyone posting and reading to consider visiting the restaurants at other times of the year. As I've seen posted elsewhere, there are some detriments to restaurant week experiences.
1. You are receiving a dummied-down menu item in most cases. In addition to the $7 per person going to charity, food cost alone chews up most of the RW pricing, let alone hourly pay for the crew to churn out the hundreds of dishes. In essence, Restaurant Week forces establishments to lose a lot of money. As such, naturally, not many of them are eager to impress RW diners with their meals.
2. We servers are predisposed to being irritable about the whole thing. I know it sounds condescending, but please, try not to blame us. Many "seasonal" diners, we'll say, do not know the etiquette that our normal clientele does. We go in to RW fully expecting to be worked to the bone (because it's so busy), run all over the place for sodas and condiments (which we're not used to), and in a lot of cases undertipped or not tipped at all. Imagine if you knew you'd spend a week to a month out of the year working twice as hard and making half as much money, and you'll see what I mean.
3. You'll SEE these restaurants, but you won't FEEL them. You're going into a restaurant that's accommodating two to three times as many guests per hour than they're used to, maybe even in their busiest times. It's impossible to receive the high-end personalized experience you would otherwise.
I recommend that, rather than be herded in like sheep for RW, save up, and go eat once a month, twice a year, special occasions only... whatever works for you. Make your OWN event of it, and your servers will recognize that and your experience will be ASTRONOMICALLY BETTER. I personally really enjoy giving a couple a wonderful anniversary experience, etc, etc. As for the menu and wine list, most of these places offer a fantastic lunch that would be much more enjoyable and hardly more expensive at all. (Three lunch courses where I work, for example, would cost you from 35-45, and be much better and more creative offerings). And while we have bottles of wine as expensive as $3500, we have several between 35 and 70 that are fantastic and unique.
So for RW, you're paying less money to be packed in, fed (relatively) substandard food, and be waited on by exhausted and impatient servers. Go to one of these places and spend 125 as a couple rather than 75, and you'll see what I mean.
Finally, let me say that Chefs and restaurants are generally very charitable anyway. Organizations like Chefs for Humanity, who host events nationwide featuring tasting dinners, celebrity chefs, auctions, etc., are run as collaborations of prominent chefs. Restaurants and hotels, especially, work in tandem with the NTFB and other charities. Don't let my comments give you the impression that restaurants are stingy.
Sorry, I'm just not looking forward to my upcoming shifts so much and wanted to rant. I hope you'll consider what I've said!
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