Restaurant Week
Two cities on opposite ends of the state will be vying for your dining dollars next week. As Wilmington prepares to kick off its third annual Restaurant Week on Monday, Rehoboth Beach restaurateurs will be gearing up to welcome patrons to their second annual Restaurant Week in the Sussex County resort town on Tuesday.
Eleven restaurants in Wilmington will offer $15, two-course lunches and $30, three-course dinners. Limited tickets remain for the May 5 "Dine Around," six different dining "loops" where patrons start at one restaurant for appetizers and stop in two others for entrees and desserts.
"It's a good thing. You get to eat cheap. I'm cheap, anyway," joked Wilmington Mayor James Baker at a recent news conference.
In downtown Rehoboth, 26 restaurants will serve $20 and $30 prix-fixe dinners through May 6. Some also will offer $15 lunches, and others plan to hold Cinco de Mayo parties.
"We're going to have $2.99 margaritas and $2 Mexican beers and a bunch of food specials. We're also going to give away some goofy stuff," said Joe Zuber, an owner of Rehoboth's Dos Locos Mexican & Seafood Restaurant on Wilmington Avenue.
While the two city culinary events may be overlapping, they're not competing for the same pool of diners, according to city of Wilmington spokesman John Rago.
"It's not like it's Newark," he said.
"People can start up there [in Wilmington] and come down here," said Fay Jacobs of Rehoboth Beach Main Street Inc., which is sponsoring the event.
Deals abound, especially at some of Rehoboth's finer dining establishments such as the Back Porch Cafe, Espuma and Chez La Mer. "At a lot of these places, you'll probably pay a lot less than you would pay on a normal Saturday night," Jacobs said.
New York City and Washington, D.C., usually hold restaurant weeks during January. Restaurateurs usually see a drop in business after the bustling holiday season, and the boost of cash-poor customers seeking out discounted lunches and dinners is an added bonus.
Yet, some cities opt to hold events in warm-weather months. Boston hosts its annual restaurant week in August, while Center City Philadelphia restaurateurs plan to have their party this year from Sept. 23-28.
Wilmington officials, with the input of local restaurateurs, chose April because it didn't conflict with other restaurant weeks in neighboring states, Rago said.
April is a time of year when "people can get out and have the ability to walk around," he said, and it also comes shortly after the weekend of Meals from the Masters culinary events that raised money for Meals on Wheels Delaware.
"We thought, 'Everyone's in the eating mood. Let's move forward,' " Rago said.
Dan Butler, owner of Deep Blue Bar & Grill on Wilmington's 11th Street, said the purpose of Restaurant Week isn't so much to "spike your sales" as it to "create a buzz, a synergy."
"We get people to come downtown who normally wouldn't come downtown," he said.
And the buzz isn't just hoped for in Wilmington.
