Restaurant Week(s) 2009

[Dave the Cook]

I just got a press release from Union Square Hospitality Group about this event, and I'm a little puzzled. But first, I note that the week is now almost three weeks, from 13 July to 31 July. I suppose they're just trying to get people out and spending money, but it seems to me that they're risking overexposure, if not outright boredom.

Here's what I don't get: the release talks about what Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe and Eleven Madison Park will be doing during Restaurant Week -- and they don't actually seem to be participating. Each restaurant will be running a $24 lunch special with $1 going to City Harvest. Each store will do this for five weekdays, rotating through the duration of Restaurant Week (although, if I'm reading it right, Gramercy Tavern, scheduled for 13-17 July, is booked, taking it out of the rotation).

If that's not confusing enough, the release concludes by saying the Tabla and Bread Bar (lunch only), Blue Smoke (lunch and dinner) and the Modern's Bar Room (dinner only) "will be officially participating in Restaurant Week."

So it looks to me like USHG is backing away from Restaurant Week by taking its most prominent stores out of play. Any ideas on why that would be?

[Nathan]

no, that's no different than before. their standard is to only have one restaurant actually participate in the dinner part of RW (one of the reasons why RW has been mostly a joke for years...lunch deals are everywhere and the good places skip doing it for dinner by and large)

Edited July 6, 2009 by Nathan (log)

[oakapple]

Nathan points this out every time RW comes along. In the early days, RW really was a deal. At some places that might still be true, but an awful lot of them have some version of this deal all year long. You can probably look at their online menus and see which are actual deals, and which are not.