January and February are usually slow months for restaurants. People just tend to stay in more, you know, because it’s cold and the huge credit card statements from Christmas just arrived. This is why restaurant week bargains tend to happen around now.
To spur spending, Newport Beach’s Restaurant Week will begin next week Monday, January 18th and end Sunday, January 31st. It’s the 10th year for the event.
This year, 61 restaurants are participating. Yes, 61. All of them offer special prix-fixe menus with lunches for $10, $15, $20, or $25, and dinners for $20, $30, $40 or $50. A complete list of the restaurants and what they offering can be seen at http://dinenb.com/restaurant-week/. If you can think of a Newport Beach restaurant you like, it’s probably participating.
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.