Newport Restaurant Weeks seen as model

Providence’s tourism movers and shakers at the Providence-Warwick Convention and Visitors Bureau were not the first to entice patrons to the city’s restaurants with the promise of a delicious meal at many of the most popular destinations in town for an attractive, fixed price during Restaurant Week.
But they surely have perfected the concept, morphing it from one summer week to two-week stints, one in the high summer and one in the depths of the winter.
The Providence Restaurant Weeks campaign is one of the most anticipated events of the year. The 2012 winter dates have been chosen and the program will run from Jan. 15 through Jan. 28. Newport is not far behind, itself holding two fixed-price Restaurant Weeks annually, one having wrapped up in mid-November.
Some visitors to the City by the Sea’s dining-out bash were there not so much to make reservations as to take notes. Representatives of a medium-sized New England community considering putting on its own Restaurant Week spent a week in Newport this past fall. They dined out at the marquee spots in town and generally studied the Newport model. It was with admiration that the visitors met with Kathryn Farrington, the Newport County Convention and Visitors Bureau’s vice president of marketing & community partnerships.
The Restaurant Week advance-team members were effusive in their praise of the size, success and lucrative sponsor participation of Newport’s dining-out extravaganza. They wondered aloud if their smaller town would be able to mount a promotion on the scale of Newport Restaurant Week.
As the visitors uncovered more of the anatomy of Restaurant Week, their study prompted numerous questions and scores of minor details which would have to be attended to back home. What should the cost be for the prix fixe meal?
They were leaning toward the ground rules of the original Restaurant Week begun in New York City in 1992, to offer the fixed-price special at each participating restaurant for the “price of the year,” which this year would be $20.12. Upon further discussion, it was agreed that while the price point was acceptable for luncheon, it would have to be higher for dinner. The three-person panel was leaning towards $30.12 for the dinner prix fixe. How many restaurants would have to take part to make the program worthwhile for both the town and its diners? The community decided to start small and set a target number of 20 restaurants to participate in a one-week event to be held in March. (Newport has 50 while last year’s Providence Winter Restaurant Weeks involved more than 65 eateries.)
How much should each restaurant owner contribute to the campaign to offset costs such as printing posters to advertise the event? Newport charges each restaurant $200 to take part in its Restaurant Week.
As I wrote in late 2010 about Providence’s inaugural Winter Restaurant Weeks, “Frequent diners from all over New England and beyond eagerly look forward to Restaurant Weeks and do not mind traveling to find them. The chatter on foodie websites such as Chowhound is full of inquiries about where to go first and which city does it better. Ever since the summer Restaurant Week promotion began six years ago, restaurateurs have been urging the PWCVB to launch a winter version. This groundswell kept building, led by proprietors such as Gianfranco Marrocco, with his cadre of eateries on Federal Hill, and Christopher Tarro of the popular Siena.”
To increase the excitement surrounding Restaurant Week, especially for out-of-towners, the PWCVB often quotes last year’s September spotlight in Travel + Leisure magazine of “America’s Best Cities for Foodies,” which ranked Providence as the No. 3 city in the nation for exceptional food, behind New Orleans and San Francisco. Providence ranked high for neighborhood cafes – behind Savannah, Ga., and New Orleans; for burgers – Houston and Salt Lake City were ahead; and for pizza – only New York City and Chicago placed higher in the rankings.
The magazine enthused about the passion of our local chefs, particularly those who have developed a sustainable, locally originated menu: “For Rhode Island foodies, farm-to-table is just the beginning.
In a separate October 2011 Travel + Leisure magazine ranking of “America’s Favorite Cities,” Providence was second in the nation for food. The city earned a Top 10 ranking in the online poll in every culinary category except barbecue and placed No. 1 for hamburgers.
Some great restaurants in Providence – such as Chez Pascal on Hope Street, or Nick’s on Broadway, in the West End – offer “boat-to-table” seafood that comes direct from local fishermen. The concept of a restaurant chef seeking out local produce to serve on his/her menu was noted also by the magazine’s readers in Nashville and in New York City, particularly in Lower Manhattan.
Other trends noted in 2010 that Providence’s chefs, restaurateurs and foodies have begun practicing include food trucks, the “restaurants on wheels” of which Portland, Ore., boasts over 200.
Our local restaurants are well-known throughout the country. The special touches that our favorite eateries offer that we who dine out often take for granted are studied and paid the sincerest form of flattery – as in copied – by restaurateurs and industry professionals from near and far. &#8226


Bruce Newbury’s “Dining Out” food and wine talk radio show is heard Saturdays and Sundays on WPRV-AM 790 and
stations throughout New England. He can be reached by email at
bruce@brucenewbury.com

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