Restaurant Week

I am writing this in anticipation of restaurant week in New Haven. Restaurant Week begins today, seemingly as part of New Haven's pitch to become a more attractive city to people looking to relocate to New Haven. Whenever I pass the State 360 project, I sincerely hope that it's working. Restaurant week in the winter seemed to pass me right by, despite the giant billboard by Ikea, the fliers in handed out by Downtown Ambassadors (those people who look like they are on Safari), and various e-mails, and newspaper articles, I still grumbled that the town just didn't try hard enough to inform me about this upcoming event. I heard about it through a friend on the Wednesday of Restaurant Week. This led to some frantic phoning. Everyone was very polite in saying, "No." My favorite "no" came from Ibiza. When you hear most things said with a slightly Spanish accent, you cannot help but feeling thrilled. After getting used to hearing the response it was easier to phone all the restaurants on the list, the final one being Thali. I didn't want to go to Thali (through no fault of the restaurant, I just was not eager for Indian.) Of course they said they had 2 seats left...5 minutes of haggling with the hostess later, during which I tried to extract myself from the situation by claiming that I wanted a table at what I thought would be a peak time, then asking for more seats, then just plain trying to back out of the arrangement. Once again the people were very patient and accommodating, despite my increasingly frantic demands.

This time around, New Haven went above and beyond by postering the New Haven train station, which I frequent. While I never noticed the poster until the same friend from the winter informed me that Restaurant Week was approaching, the poster was then a nice reminder. I will be going to at least 3 restaurants this week: Zinc, Ibiza and L'Orcio. I will try to fit some others into my lunch schedule. I tried to get reservations to Bespoke a week in advance, but apparently so did hundreds of other people. I also tried to reserve a table at Kudeta, but either they are shunning the 20th century by letting their web-site go defunct and disconnecting their phone, or they are going through some issues with being open. Most of the restaurants use the OpenTable system, which takes some of the thrill out of reservation making, but is a lot faster and less awkward. I will be writing up my impressions of these restaurants after I go, as a mental keepsake for myself, and a guide to restaurants for anyone who might be interested in that sort of thing. I will also provide some thoughts on how the OpenTable system works out. So far, I have been called by one restaurant to confirm my reservation, which is reassuring. Part of me fears that my reservations will never be read and I will hike up to these restaurants just to be turned away at the door. Until soon.
-DT