Restaurant Week is back in the Fox Cities. From September 29th to October 1st, thirteen local restaurants will showcase their best dishes with special menus made specifically for the event. Menus will include breakfast, lunch and dinner options at fixed prices.
Restaurant Week was cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic, but after some planning with local restaurants the Fox Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau says it was able to safely bring it back this year.
“We had a lot of different discussions with the restaurants before we even planned the event just to make sure that they felt comfortable with it and they could pull it off as well,” said marketing communications manager Maddie Uhlenbrauk.
Many of the restaurants will have socially distanced seating and all menus will be via Q-R code for a contact-less ordering experience. In addition, restaurants are asking for patience as many suffering a workers shortage.
"We had a couple restaurants that had participated in the past and could not this year just due to the fact that they were short staffed. So that’s really our plea to all the guests this year is to be patient and to be kind," Uhlenbrauk said. "Our restaurants are doing the best they can and we know that no matter what happens you’ll have a good meal."
For Fratellos Waterfront Restaurant, restaurant week is about trying out new creations for their special menu.
“We’re italian here at Fratello's Waterfront and for lunch we’ve kind of gone away from it a little bit, having some fun with a Polynesian salad for example or we have a sweet and sour sirloin shaved steak," said Scott Roekle, the director of operations for Supple Restaurant Group.
Restaurants say Restaurant Week is a great opportunity for publicity, especially as more people have begun to dine-in in again amid the pandemic.
"It's an exciting time not only for our staff but for the guests because they're actually coming out to dine," Roekle said. "It really is about spending the time, sitting down and enjoying really interesting and different foods. A lot of restaurants like to bring out stuff they wouldn't normally bring out on their menus and have those guests try out some new items that are out there."
For more information about Fox Cities Restaurant Week, visit foxcities.org
