Abby Conway

I hope you’ve all made your Restaurant Week 2010 reservations! The 2-week long event (so why are we still calling it restaurant week as opposed to weeks?) starts this Sunday, March 14th. Spots are filling insanely fast! Last week I decided to try and make a reservation for Market by Jean Georges at the W Hotel; I had to settle for 9p on a Sunday.

This year’s citywide winter restaurant week will run  3/14 thru 3/19 & 3/21 thru 3/26. Participating restaurants are offering prix fixe menus. 2-course lunches are $15.10, 3-course lunches are $20.10 and 3-course dinners are $33.10. Check out RestaurantWeekBoston.com to preview menus and OpenTable.com to make reservations.

I spent a little while (okay, a long while) sorting through some menus and trying to decide what restaurants were doing something a little different than the norm. Here is what I came up with…

• Post 390, a slightly newer addition to Boston’s restaurant scene, is offering a different menu during the second half of restaurant week than the first.
• Upstairs in the Square is charging the RW standard of $33.10 in the Monday Club Bar dining room but if you prefer to dine in the more swanky Soirée dining room, you’re going to have to cough up an extra ten bucks.
• Union Bar and Grille is offering a complimentary glass of wine with their dinner menu, making the $33.10 three-course prix fixe dinner an even better deal.
• Tremont 647 is offering way more choices than most restaurants. Also, if you dine on a Sunday, Monday or Tuesday, they are offering an additional two choices for each course.
• While most will keep the same menu for most or all of RW, L’Espalier will change their menu daily. On the downside, their three-course dinner is $42 rather than the RW standard of $33.10.

No matter where you decide to dine for Restaurant Week, Lingbo Li, a Harvard undergrad and local food blogger suggests you do your research before making your reservations. Well, actually she suggests skipping it all together.

“My advice: do your research. If the price cut is significant, the sample menus look right up your alley, and you don’t mind dining on a busy night, RW may be a good deal. But for most people, a little research and planning goes a long way. Most restaurants offer lower prices at lunch anyway, and you won’t be competing with the masses for limited spots, or dealing with stressed-out waiters.”

If two weeks of restaurant deals isn’t enough, you’re in luck! The North End is launching it’s own restaurant week this year. The North End Restaurant Week will immediately follow the citywide RW from 3/28 thru 4/2 and 4/4 thru 4/9. Two more weeks of good food and great deals!