Despite the economy, local restaurants fare quite well during San Diego Restaurant Week. San Diego\u2019s culinary showcase returns for its fifth installment Sunday, Sept. 13 to Friday, Sept. 18. More than 180 participating restaurants, a record for the event,\u00a0across the county will offer $20, $30 and $40 three-course, prix-fix menus, allowing diners to enjoy fine food on fixed funds.\u00a0 \u00a0 “Everyone realizes it\u2019s tough economic times. You have to offer even more value,” said Lehn Goetz, owner of Caf\u00e9 Coyote and president of the San Diego chapter of the California Restaurant Association. Goetz said that San Diego has come to have one of the top restaurant week promotions in the nation, attracting an estimated 200,000 diners over the six-day event.\u00a0Goetz said he believes that San Diego restaurants have not been hit as hard by the recession as other markets such as Las Vegas, but he added that events that promote eating out\u00a0are still greatly beneficial. This year, Restaurant Week has been held as a biannual event, with another having been held in January.\u00a0 The face of this year\u2019s restaurant week is San Diego\u2019s Sam the Cooking Guy, Sam Zien. “I\u2019m all about people cooking for themselves,” said Zien, who was asked to serve as the spokesman for Restaurant Week and hosts the cooking show of the same name. “But I\u2019m also the first to say there\u2019s stuff you don\u2019t want to make or can\u2019t take the time to make but you still want to try. (Restaurant Week) is giving you a reason to do it.” Zien has also shot a series of vignettes for the show\u2019s website on how to eat like a pro and to be more adventurous in your food and an etiquette short on being kind to your server. Participants include casual eateries such as Point Loma\u2019s Corvette diner and Nick\u2019s at the Pier in Ocean Beach and more formal establishments such as La Jolla\u2019s Marine Room and Nine-Ten restaurant as well as beach-area favorites such as JRDN restaurant and the Fishery.\u00a0 \u00a0 “While the pricier restaurants sell out very fast because there\u2019s an impression of greater value,” said Zien, “I think you should go eat out where you want to.” San Diego Restaurant Week is sponsored by the California Restaurant Association\u2019s San Diego chapter, a group of 1,500 local restaurants that meet to promote the business, share information on practices and raise money for charity.\u00a0 Not only does Restaurant Week serve to highlight the city\u2019s finest restaurants. In the past, it\u2019s been very good for business, packing out eateries during slower weeknights (events run Sundays through Fridays), in a slower time of the year, at the end of tourist season.\u00a0 Event organizers have also launched a new website that allows visitors to select a restaurant according to price, location or variety. The site also gives complete menu listings and brief restaurant profiles, and when you sign up for the newsletter, you are entered in a contest to win dinner out every weekend for a year. No special tickets or passes are required. However,\u00a0reservations are strongly recommended and can be made\u00a0by calling the restaurants directly or by visiting www.sandiego-restaurantweek.com.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite the economy, local restaurants fare quite well during San Diego Restaurant Week. San Diego\u2019s culinary showcase returns for its fifth installment Sunday, Sept. 13 to Friday, Sept. 18. More than 180 participating restaurants, a record for the event,\u00a0across the county will offer $20, $30 and $40 three-course, prix-fix menus, allowing diners to enjoy fine […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Restaurant Week caters to financially strapped","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11551,11593,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-297357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-no-images","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}