Students Enjoy Full Stomachs, Full Wallets During Restaurant Week

Dumpster-diving and selling one’s soul to the devil are but two, albeit potentially messy, ways for students living in New York to get a taste of the city’s finest restaurants on a budget. But twice a year, the restaurants of New York offer an alternative: New York City Restaurant Week. For two weeks in the winter and summer seasons (this year, January 18-23 and 25-30), foodies lacking the chunk of change normally needed to dine at the city’s best eateries find salvation and indulgence in three-course prix fixe lunch menus with the set price of $24.07—gratuity, beverages, and tax excluded.

Designed to jolt awake the typically quiet winter dining season, Restaurant Week provides a great opportunity for poor students to delve into the richly varied New York cuisine scene. For the next two weeks, more than 250 restaurants scattered across the five boroughs and offering a massive variety of styles are taking Restaurant Week reservations. All participating establishments are serving a prix fixe lunch of three or four choices per appetizer, main, and dessert course, reflective of their particular cuisine and culinary skills. A few—but not all—restaurants will offer a prix fixe dinner for $35, so make sure to check ahead.

As restaurant week draws huge crowds of New Yorkers and tourists alike, it is in each restaurant’s interest to perform to the best of its ability. So what one sees on the prix fixe menus are not the leftovers from the restaurants’ regular hours. Instead, expect Restaurant Week chefs to offer succulent, well-prepared food that reflects their restaurants’ particular brand of culinary brilliance. The legendary Midtown West restaurant 21 Club, for example, offers such gourmet main courses as wild mushroom and butternut squash risotto paired with parmesan foam and pumpkin oil. Japanese mainstay Nobu in TriBeCa offers a selection of its highly regarded sushi.

For the next two weeks, the top restaurants of the culinary world are available even to foodies on a budget. While it should be noted that many of New York’s restaurants offer prix fixe bargains year round, it is only during Restaurant Week that the crème de la crème of the food world truly open up its gates to those of us with thinner wallets. The following restaurants come highly recommended: Café des Artistes, Eleven Madison Park, Gramercy Tavern, 21 Club, River Café, Tabla, Asiate, Nobu, Mesa Grill, and Union Square Café.

View the participating restaurants and make reservations at www.nycvisit.com/restaurantweek