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Fine Dining For a Bargain During Restaurant Week 2005

© Eugenia E. Gratto

One event that has brightened away the post-holiday doldrums in Washington D.C. has been Restaurant Week, which kicks off again today and runs through January 16. For seven days, nearly 100 of the city's top restaurants offer prix fixe lunch and dinner menus featuring some of their signature dishes. It's a great way to eat well and try some of the city's best cooking at bargain prices.

The rules of the deal are simple: Lunch is $20.05 and dinner is $30.05, not including tax, tip or beverages. Reservations are recommended, particularly later in the week, when word of the event has saturated local news outlets and everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. It's also a good idea to notify the restaurant that you're coming specifically for the Restaurant Week event.

Each restaurant handles the event slightly differently. Some restaurants, like Bistro Bis on Capitol Hill, has a fixed price menu option all year round, which means the offerings are more widely varied. Some restaurants open it wide up and let diners pick one appetizer, soup or salad option, one entrée, and one dessert from the full menu—sort of a choose-your-own-adventure method of prix fixe eating. Many, though, opt for a set prix fixe menu that focuses on a small selection of favorites from the restaurant's regular menu.

My boyfriend and I have an anniversary that falls during Restaurant Week each year, and last year, we took advantage of the evening to enjoy the prix fixe menu at Fin, a seafood restaurant just south of Dupont Circle. Although the menu choices were limited to a selection of two items for each course, the food was excellent and the service lovely. Restaurant Week is a semi-annual event, and we enjoyed a sublime meal at Palette during August's version of the bargain eating festival.

However, it's worth selecting restaurants carefully. For some reason, there are restaurants that participate in the program and then are reported to be snooty with the diners that choose the prix fixe meal over some of their higher-priced menu options. This strikes me as a waste of time for the restaurant. While there are certainly some people who use Restaurant Week as the opportunity to try a place they would never otherwise spend the money to visit, there are certainly more people who use it as a chance to try someplace new with an eye toward returning. Good sources for intelligence on which restaurants are playing nice and which are being naughty can be had on the Washington D.C. message boards on Chowhound.com, as well as in Tom Sietsema's dining chat on the WashingtonPost.com web site. That chat is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Wednesday, January 12.

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