la.foodblogging

I’m not completely wowed by the menus offered during DineLA Restaurant Week. Browsing the list of participating restaurants, I’m not totally convinced that you’re getting much of a deal at a lot of places.

There are a few joints that seem to be offering deep discounts. This is assuming that the dishes served during restaurant week are IDENTICAL to the ones they serve during normal weeks. From a quick look through the three courses (listed at the DineLA Site), so far the best deal I can find is at Abode, where if you order right, you could save $37. Here’s how it stacks up:

Appetizer - Roasted Baby Beet Salad, Horseradish Goat Cheese Mousse ($14)
Entree - Duo of Lamb, Pea and Saffron Puree, Tapenade ($39 based on Duo of Duck)
Dessert - Chef’s Selection of Cheeses ($18)

Total if you ordered off the normal menu: $71
Total During Restaurant Week: $34
Savings: $37!

That’s pretty good. I haven’t called, but looking on Open Table there aren’t any are tables available during Restaurant Week (which is actually two weeks, starting next Monday, Jan 28th, but excluding Saturday).

Are there any other great deal out there? You can save about $12 at Beacon, $15 at 3 on Fourth, I would be interested which restaurant is offering the steepest discounts. Which are offering their top dishes and which are just serving up their pastas and castoffs? Please let me know in the comments if you go somewhere and they are not serving the same dishes they normally offer. Let me know where you go and get a great deal.

Are you planning on trying out any spots just because they are on the DineLA list?

Update:
I called for a Table8 reservation, I got a rather curt host who responded to my reservation request with “is this for DineLA?”. Stupidly, I said yes, and he said “I think that all we have left is 10:00 PM”. I asked him if he could make sure and he instantly said “Yeah, 10:00 PM is all we have”.

Maybe I’m cynical, but I strongly suspect that these DineLA meals are like frequent flyer flights — limited seats for the times you would want to use them.

By Jonah (see more of his posts). Jonah is the founder of la.foodblogging and also created Digesty, a food blog aggregator and Cheww.com, a spam free foodblog search engine.