Eating on the cheap(ish)
I was just checking out Chowhound, one of my favorite food-related message boards, when I noticed some people on the South board were talking about the Triangle’s first ever restaurant week.
This is great news. Basically a bunch of restaurants, many of them pricy and decidedly upscale, offer three-course, prix fixe menus for relative bargins. Big cities such as New York and Baltimore have long had restaurant weeks. Nice to see it happen in North Carolina, too, and especially in such a bustling and growing restaurant community as the Triangle. The list of restaurants doesn’t include the Triangle’s poshest places, but if you’re in Raleigh this week, you could make a reservation for a $25 dinner at Vivace, an Italian trattoria or - yeegads - a $15 three-course lunch at South, a Cotton Mill-like New Southern place (I’m reading the menu and sweet potato and Vidalia onion raviolis, or smoked chicken and egg noodles are making me hungry - though they not be an option on the prix fixe). When you think about how much an appetizer, an entree and a dessert add up, it can be a good value. It’s also a great way to try a new restaurant that you might have considered too rich for your blood. You won’t save money or be wowed by exotic ingredients at every participating restaurant (some of them just don’t have upscale or even particularly remarkable menus), but you can.
Triangle Restaurant Week runs through Sunday.
One thing I don’t get: it’s called “Triangle Restaurant Week,” yet the list of participating restaurants is limited to Raleigh. A post on Chowhound from one of the organizers indicated they wanted to start things small, but some of the Triangle’s best restaurants are in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Durham and even little Hillsbourgh. And while I’m on my soap box, I think Triad Restaurant Week has a nice ring to it.
