Manhattan can have their stupid Restaurant Week, we don’t need it. That’s because Brooklyn has its own temporally-suspect restaurant event, and it’s going down this month! The 10th annual Dine in Brooklyn starts on March 11 and will last until March 21, featuring over 200 participating restaurants (in list form or in google map) offering a mix of three-course dinner menus for $28, three-course lunches for $20.13 and some “two-fer” brunch/lunch/dinner deals. This is the week to try out places your mouth has been watering over, but you haven’t been able to fit into your budget.
At a press conference at Borough Hall, Marty Markowitz, tried out to be a Punderdome contestant (“I’m not buttering you up, but thanks to all of our restaurants over the last decade, Brooklyn’s all souped up”), while he delivered a speech ushering in the week of discounted eats. The highlight was his pretty spot-on tongue-in-cheek litany: “Brooklyn has become the renowned epicenter of organic, local, artisanal, handcrafted, grass-fed, sustainable, free-range, gourmet, cruelty-free food.”
Included in that list is beer book spot Lola BKLYN, serving lunch and dinner for one and brunch for two, as if you needed another reason to go. But even better, since all of the dinners will cost the same, it’s your chance to get out to Brooklyn’s fancier restaurants and live like the 1% for elevan scant days. Jay-Z favorite Buttermilk Channel is participating in the dinner for one deal, and Park Slope Italian spot al di la Trattoria will be offering you lunch for the price of a Jackson and change.
You can also finally get down to Ditmas Park if you’ve been meaning to go, and get lunch at the Farm on Adderley, or hit up new to Williamsburg Station for lunch and dinner, and see if they’ve earned their prime spot right outside the Bedford stop. You can even stick around Williamsburg and hit up well-liked tapas spot The Saint Austere for dinner. Or, if you want to keep pretending like you’re in the restaurant scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, you can go from lunch at Station to dinner at fellow French traveler Chez Moi.
And if you don’t feel like going it alone, you can hit up one of the places offering dinner for two for the same low price, like Southern-fried goodness Peaches Restaurant. Or set you and your dates mouths on fire at Indian spot Bombay Masala.
Finally, here are a couple tips for how to maximize your Dine in Brooklyn experience:
The offers vary from restaurant to restaurant, so you gotta call first or check the restaurant’s website.
Make reservations as soon as you can, as spots will be filling up. And make sure you mention you’ll be dining as part of Dine in Brooklyn so they’ll be able to properly accommodate you.
Beyond expanding your taste buds, Dine in Brooklyn is a great way to check out neighborhoods you want to learn more about. The list of participating restaurants is organized by neighborhood, so you can make a night of it, say, hitting up pastrami at historic outpost Mill Basin Deli and then exploring the nabe, which there’s a good chance you’ve never been to unless you are wayyy old-school BK.
Take the girl or boy you’ve been shacking up with but are hesitant about spending time with in the post-bedroom world to a two-fer-one morning-after brunch; if it turns out the cross-the-table chemistry’s no good, no big deal, you’ll only have to pay for half-a-person’s coffee and eggs. And if it’s going well? Don’t shy away from ordering that extra side of bacon.
Use Dine in Brooklyn as a selling point for your stick-in-the-mud Manhattan friends to come spend time with you in the best borough! And if they still cop an attitude, well, maybe make some different friends.
Last but not least, Don’t forget to tip your waiters and bartenders!
Follow Kate @yatinbrooklyn for more tweets about buildings and food