Restaurant Week
Some of you, kind or longsuffering enough to read this journal, may have noticed that my recent posts have been tending towards introspection or natter about dancing. I suspect that trend may continue...but not in this post. No, in this post I plan to be opinionated.
Hmm, that makes it sound as if I am a mild-mannered, reserved person with few fiery opinions. Er, not so much with the accurate.
Whatever. At any rate, I have to say that I am not a big fan of Restaurant Week. My reasons for being underwhelmed fall into two categories. For one thing, I think it's rarely as good a deal as people think. Let's just put right up front the fact that alcohol isn't included; of course restaurants won't include drinks, but y'know, that's definitely part of my bill. Moreover, there's the actual $30 price tag. When Restaurant Week happens, twice-annually, I do usually skim through the list of participants and glance at the offered menus for any restaurants that catch my eye. I pick out what I think I'd order from the RW menu, then I go to the restaurant's website, look at their normal menu with prices, and calculate how much that meal would be without the RW deal. Of course, the super-high-end restaurants like Le Bec Fin or Striped Bass don't participate. Even at roughly mid-level restaurants I wouldn't frequent regularly (e.g. from this past iteration of RW participants, Amada, an Old City tapas restaurant which I enjoyed with my friend Dan in May '06), my impression -- and granted I usually only have the patience to do this a couple times -- is that the savings would be approximately equivalent to a free dessert ($7-10). Sure, that's not completely trivial, but now I come to my second reason for being dubious about Restaurant Week.
From my baker friend, I know that the tendency of some restaurants is to design a menu that can be quickly prepped, then push out each instance without the attention that might usually be devoted to the dishes. That simply does not incline me to choose RW as my first venture to a new or famous restaurant, when I have no frame of reference for the quality of the food. A RW meal is always more expensive than $30 anyway, with tip and drinks; so by the time everything is totalled up, I'd rather just go to the restaurant at a normal time and choose whatever I want.
This is all not to say that Restaurant Week can't be a good experience. For instance, last night I went to Django with JLR, asmanyaswill, rbk106, and rapper!Andrew. (Django, as many restaurants do, was extending their RW offer beyond the actual dates of 28 Jan. - 2 Feb.) Now, imo, Django was an excellent choice for a RW venture. It's a BYOB -- and I matter-of-factly took charge of furnishing the B (a 2001 rioja), so alcohol wasn't an inordinate addition to the bill. Best of all, Django was offering a normal-sized, seasonal menu, so there was less wariness about the choices they proffered. In the end, I suppose I'm still idealistic enough about the Philly local-food byob bistro that I'm optimistic Django took some care to present their RW patrons with a good dining experience. I'm happy I visited Django; it just had to satisfy several criteria before I felt satisfied with my RW investment.
An entry about the actual meal, which was tasty, will have to wait for the next post.
Hmm, that makes it sound as if I am a mild-mannered, reserved person with few fiery opinions. Er, not so much with the accurate.
Whatever. At any rate, I have to say that I am not a big fan of Restaurant Week. My reasons for being underwhelmed fall into two categories. For one thing, I think it's rarely as good a deal as people think. Let's just put right up front the fact that alcohol isn't included; of course restaurants won't include drinks, but y'know, that's definitely part of my bill. Moreover, there's the actual $30 price tag. When Restaurant Week happens, twice-annually, I do usually skim through the list of participants and glance at the offered menus for any restaurants that catch my eye. I pick out what I think I'd order from the RW menu, then I go to the restaurant's website, look at their normal menu with prices, and calculate how much that meal would be without the RW deal. Of course, the super-high-end restaurants like Le Bec Fin or Striped Bass don't participate. Even at roughly mid-level restaurants I wouldn't frequent regularly (e.g. from this past iteration of RW participants, Amada, an Old City tapas restaurant which I enjoyed with my friend Dan in May '06), my impression -- and granted I usually only have the patience to do this a couple times -- is that the savings would be approximately equivalent to a free dessert ($7-10). Sure, that's not completely trivial, but now I come to my second reason for being dubious about Restaurant Week.
From my baker friend, I know that the tendency of some restaurants is to design a menu that can be quickly prepped, then push out each instance without the attention that might usually be devoted to the dishes. That simply does not incline me to choose RW as my first venture to a new or famous restaurant, when I have no frame of reference for the quality of the food. A RW meal is always more expensive than $30 anyway, with tip and drinks; so by the time everything is totalled up, I'd rather just go to the restaurant at a normal time and choose whatever I want.
This is all not to say that Restaurant Week can't be a good experience. For instance, last night I went to Django with JLR, asmanyaswill, rbk106, and rapper!Andrew. (Django, as many restaurants do, was extending their RW offer beyond the actual dates of 28 Jan. - 2 Feb.) Now, imo, Django was an excellent choice for a RW venture. It's a BYOB -- and I matter-of-factly took charge of furnishing the B (a 2001 rioja), so alcohol wasn't an inordinate addition to the bill. Best of all, Django was offering a normal-sized, seasonal menu, so there was less wariness about the choices they proffered. In the end, I suppose I'm still idealistic enough about the Philly local-food byob bistro that I'm optimistic Django took some care to present their RW patrons with a good dining experience. I'm happy I visited Django; it just had to satisfy several criteria before I felt satisfied with my RW investment.
An entry about the actual meal, which was tasty, will have to wait for the next post.