Restaurant Week

By now you should be asking yourself, "What is this Restaurant Week thing, anyway?"

RW is a bi-annual festival of food involving restaurants from all over the D.C. metro area. Restaurants from the entire food spectrum- pricey/cheap; ethnic/American; modern/old fashioned- get involved in restaurant week, and it's all to the benefit of we the foodies!

This is how it works: A participating RW restaurant agrees to serve a three course meal (appetizer, entree, dessert) during the week for the price of $20 for lunch and $30 for dinner. Actually, it's the $ amount plus a few pennies to acknowledge the year; this year's dinners cost $30.07. Are you with me so far? Good!

From that point it gets a little hazy as each restaurant can make its own rules. I have been to some places that offer their whole menu up for the RW special, others create a smaller menu from which you can select a few options, and yet others still (like tapas places) do a kind of all-you-can-eat smorgasbord.

Restaurant Week is usually held in January and August of each month. If you are in D.C. this week and you want to see what's still available, I strongly recommend checking out opentable.com .