Bite Into Boston: Restaurant Week 2012

Mar. 18 will kick off Boston’s biannual food festival: Restaurant Week 2012. Put on by the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau, Restaurant Week is a communal effort by the restaurants of Boston, over 200 of which participate and create fixed price menus at significant discounts to patrons. A two-course lunch is available for $15.12, a three-course lunch for $20.12, and a three-course dinners for $33.12 (12 cents are added as a reference to the year and many vendors remind patrons that these do not include beverages, tax, or tip).

The tradition began in 2000, and has seen an incredible upswing in participation in recent years, last March’s Restaurant Week topping out at an all time high of 227 restaurants. The Boston event series was the second of its kind, modeled after New York City’s Restaurant Week. Since Boston’s inaugural year, several other cities have joined in the culinary celebration, such as Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport. Pat Moscaritolo, president of Boston’s Visitors Bureau, said that the inspiration for Boston’s Restaurant Week came when the bureau noted a decline in the patronage of high level restaurants more than midlevel ones, reflecting the economic constraints. Because the bureau “wanted to establish Boston as a culinary destination,” Moscaritolo said to The Sun Chronicle, Boston Restaurant Week was their idea to satisfy the customer demand for lower prices with their ambition of promoting high quality establishments.

Although restaurants are taking a cut in their profits during these ten days of feasting, most owners are enthusiastic in participation because the week encourages dinners to try new establishments and aims to promote a general appreciation of food in Beantown, something that benefits all those in the food service industry.

With a range of restaurants in Boston, Cambridge, and throughout the state, Restaurant Week is a behemoth for the casual foodie, overwhelming in the number of restaurants, their scattered locations, and the necessity of making a reservation for the most popular locales. However, customers can go to http://www.restaurantweekboston.com/ for a full list of menus and filter their options by location, type of cuisine, or time of day. Diners should remember to use Opentable.com and their American Express card in order to find supplementary discounts. n

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