This week, thousands of Cincinnatians will be enjoying a cheap lunch or dinner when the annual Greater Cincinnati Restaurant Week begins again today.
From Sept. 21 to 27, more than 50 restaurants in the Cincinnati area will offer brand new items or heavily discounted menu mainstays to entice guests to come and dine in. Each participating restaurant will feature a menu that is at least three courses, priced at $26, $36, $46 or $56.
Tony Frank, former publisher of CityBeat and current director of business development at Cincinnati Magazine, founded Restaurant Week after his other event, Cincinnati Burger Week, became wildly popular back when it launched in 2015. He said that several restaurants liked the idea of participating in Burger Week, but it created too much work for back-of-house staff.
“Burger Week went beyond anybody’s expectations and drove traffic that we had never seen before, and it was the first week we had ever launched,” Frank said. “And some of the feedback was … ‘We love participating, but we’ll never do it again, because it was very hard on the line in the kitchen. However, if you were to look at introducing a restaurant week, we would love to join forces with you all.'”
Back then, most of Cincinnati’s prior “restaurant weeks” had fallen by the wayside. An organization named Greater Cincinnati Independence used to run a promotion like Restaurant Week, but the group had disbanded. Another, similar promotion named “Do Downtown” proved to be quite popular — but, as the name implies, only restaurants located in the Central Business District were allowed to be involved.
“These other restaurants … they couldn’t participate, which is why they wanted us to create something that could bring that week back to businesses that are in the 275 loop and beyond,” Frank said.
Eventually, Greater Cincinnati Restaurant Week was created to encapsulate all of the city’s culinary scene; much like its counterpart, it was an instant success. Today, the reach of the promotion has stretched all the way up to West Chester, Fort Wright and parts of Indiana, making the event one of the few that can be experienced all over the Tri-State area.
“It’s a great deal. You know, food costs have increased for a lot of restaurants. So when they’re curating these menus, they are doing so at a discounted rate in hopes to attract new customers,” he said. “So you get to try a place that you’ve never been to before, or an item at a restaurant that you’ve been to before, at a discount. And you get to support our friends, and family, and neighbors, and locally owned and operated businesses while doing it.”
This year’s edition features plenty of restaurants that have never participated in the promotion before, like Otto’s and Lonely Pine Steakhouse. Even more unusual is that Taste of Belgium founder Jean-François Flechet’s new concept is launching this week specifically so that it will be able to participate in Restaurant Week.
“This is a first. You know, we have a lot of restaurants that are always opening in and around the time, and they don’t want to participate just yet because they want to work out all the kinks first. Then there’s places like Jacques that are going to work out the kinks during Restaurant Week, and I love it.”
To incentivize making several trips around the city this week, the Restaurant Week team has launched an app that lets you earn points by checking in to various restaurants. Guests who dine at three or more restaurants will be entered to win various prizes, like $300 gift cards to restaurants involved with the promotion.
More than anything, however, Frank hopes the week is an excuse to share a good meal with the people close to you.
“Yeah, we want people to go out and explore the culinary scene in Cincinnati, but it’s really about gathering and community. Calling up an old friend you haven’t talked to in a while and catching up over a meal, or getting the family together that you haven’t seen in a while,” he said. “I think that’s always the goal is bringing people together over food, but then also for people to go to areas of the city that they’ve never been to before, so they are exposed to the communities surrounding these restaurants.”
For more information on Greater Cincinnati Restaurant Week, visit the website.
