Aurora’s first-ever Restaurant Week is running through Feb. 4, but restaurant owners in the city say the effort which began Jan. 21 is already bearing fruit.
Over 60 restaurants are taking part in the program, offering prix-fixe menus, special dishes and exclusive discounts.
“It was colder out the first few days when Restaurant Week opened, but this past Friday night we definitely saw more people out and they were asking about it,” said Claudia Urrutia, owner of La Quinta de los Reyes on New York Street in downtown Aurora.
“The publicity is working and we’re excited,” she said.
La Quinta put together a special menu offering a number of specially-priced dishes that Urrutia said are discounted 25% or more.
“We are offering one of our main dishes, the Parrillada la Quinta that’s for two people, and normally sells for $44.95. We gave between 25% and 28% discount for all those items,” she said. “I’m glad that we’re finally doing this in Aurora. January, things slow down, and I just thought this was a great idea and getting people off their couch. An incentive to go out, and this gets clients to try our food and hopefully come back.”
Down the street from La Quinta, Ballydoyle Irish Pub has also seen Restaurant Week visitors coming in and jumping on a special spiced-pear martini as well as an offer to get a free dessert with an entree.
Gabriel Bennett, events coordinator for the pub, said that early on during the promotion the “special martini has been far and away our best seller, and our desserts have always been very popular.”
“Getting a free dessert has been a real big bonus for people,” she said. “We’ve had people in already asking about the special Restaurant Week and we’re very excited about it. I’m really glad the city brought this to Aurora. It’s a great opportunity to showcase all the restaurants we have here.”
Folks at the newly-opened Giardino Trattoria & Pizzeria in downtown Aurora couldn’t be happier with Restaurant Week and reported sales so brisk the first Friday of the promotion they almost sold out of their prix-fixe meals.
Manager Jackie Enkhbold said the restaurant that just had its ribbon-cutting Nov. 14 is offering a three-course meal with appetizer, entree and dessert for $35 during Restaurant Week, a savings of at least $15 if people ordered the items a la carte.
“Having Restaurant Week is a great way to help get the word out about our location and, so far, people love it,” Enkhbold said on Saturday. “Even people who haven’t heard about Restaurant Week have been ordering from our prix-fixe menu. Friday, we sold a lot of it to the point that we almost ran out of the things that are on that menu. We did about 300 guests and nearly half of that did our prix-fixe menu.
“People love the menu and we coursed it in a way where our appetizers would go with our entrees and our desserts would match with our entrees as well,” Enkhbold said. “I think that people love that we gave them options that would pair with each other.”
Marisa and Dennis Spitz of Aurora were among those enjoying the prix-fixe meal on Saturday night at the restaurant and called it both delicious and a great bargain.
“We live right here and were happy to find something that we really enjoyed,” Marisa Spitz said. “We were supposed to meet another couple and they had to cancel and we thought – why don’t we come here? We’ll absolutely be back.”
Society 57 in downtown Aurora is also taking part in Restaurant Week.
Owner Scott Hodge of Society 57, whose website boasts that it is “more than just a coffee shop or event venue,” believes his offerings “fit in perfectly with Restaurant Week” despite it not being a sit-down dinner restaurant.
“We put our special menu together and so far, we’ve had a lot of people showing interest who have never come in before because of Restaurant Week,” Hodge said Saturday. “That’s been pretty exciting. We’ve gotten some new people in the door. We wanted to give them an opportunity to try more than one item, so we put together a ‘toast flight’ where people can choose three different toasts (with toppings) and we also did a latte flight so people could try that. The hope is people would figure out what they like best.
“One of the things that’s fun for us is to also talk to other people who are coming in and encourage them to try other places in downtown Aurora,” Hodge added. “We want everybody to succeed down here. Our staff has a list of all the restaurants that are participating, and we’ve been sharing that. Some people like bouncing around. They’re kind of on a crawl.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
