Customers enjoy balmy weather and discounted French cuisine at Eastern Standard. The establishment is one of 220 eateries participating in Boston’s Restaurant Week. Rachel Pearson/DFP Staff
Since one of their sons wants to be a chef one day, Kevin and Gail Legend of Ocala, Fla., took their family to Eastern Standard on Wednesday evening after a day of touring colleges.
The Eastern Standard experience, they said, was anything but standard.
The restaurant is one of 220 participating in the Greater Boston Convention Visitors Bureau’s seventh Winter Restaurant Week, which runs from March 18 through 23 and March 25 through 30, offering customers gourmet food at costs much lower than standard rates.
Her “very culinary family” was intrigued by the concept of Restaurant Week, Gail Legend said.
Over the course of the 12 days, each participating restaurant offers exclusive price-fixed menus to interested patrons, with three-course dinners for $33.12, three-course lunches for $20.12 and two-course lunches for $15.12.
“We learned [about it] accidentally during the tour at BU. . . . It was outstanding, really good,” her husband said, standing outside of the restaurant in Kenmore Square, its red awnings peeping out from underneath the Hotel Commonwealth behind them.
Restaurant Week presents great opportunities to locals as well, said Amanda Miller, another Eastern Standard patron.
“It’s just an opportunity to experience a restaurant that’s a higher price point than you would normally go to,” she said. “It’s an opportunity to test a restaurant that’s very expensive to test.”
While patrons enjoy paying lower prices for food, restaurants also benefit from the 12 days of prix fixé menus, said Molly Hopper, a guest relations and marketing manager at Eastern Standard.
“It . . . gives us a chance to create a special menu with items not on our regular menu, and I think for our chefs that’s a lot of fun,” she said. “We do one menu the first week and one menu the second week . . . to give diners a couple different options.”
Boston Chefs, Inc., an invitation-only group that comprises the area’s “best” restaurants and chefs, according to its website, promotes Boston Restaurant Week by publishing the online Insiders’ Guide to Boston Restaurant Week.
“Once upon a time, we posted a news item about the event on our news and events page, promoting the restaurants that we work with that participate, and it just generated a huge amount of traffic,” said Honor Lydon, the executive editor of restaurant news for the group.
Managers at Eastern Standard said restaurants see an increased amount of customers during Restaurant Week.
“Restaurant Week has become a highly sought after week for diners in the city,” Hopper said. “They kind of wait to check out new restaurants and really kind of look forward to trying out new stuff. . . . I’m excited about new guests coming through our doors.”
She said Eastern Standard patrons who have never heard of Restaurant Week often order from their specialized menus during the week as well.
The Greater Boston Convention and Visitor’s Bureau partnered with American Express for the week to donate some of the food festival’s profits to Melmark New England, a nonprofit organization that provides clinical services to autistic children and adolescents, according to its website.
Whenever a patron uses an American Express card, $0.25 per transaction, up to $5000, will go to Melmark, according to the GBCVB website.
Although Eastern Standard would likely have participated in Restaurant Week even without the charity benefit, Hopper said the restaurant is excited to support the organization.
“It’s a nice way for the charity to hopefully get some exposure and educate people about the work that they’re trying to do so I think that element is great and we’re happy to [help],” she said. “If every restaurant can do a little, I think it would be a wonderful thing to do for the community.”
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