This year’s event — now in its 16th year — includes 46 locally-owned restaurants. In all, 29 restaurants are dishing out three-course lunch specials for $10 (or less), while 35 restaurants serve up three-course dinner specials for $30 (or less).
Several restaurants have dinner options featured at a $20 to $25 price point. As menus are received, they will be uploaded to DowntownSyracuse.com, per a Monday news release.
Those interested can visit website DowntownSyracuse.com/DiningWeeks where users have the option to sort their preferences according to “Lunch,” “Dinner,” or “All.” Menus are clickable underneath the website link for each respective restaurant, the Downtown Committee said.
Downtown Dining Weeks was designed to generate business during what “typically tends to be a slower dining season.” It typically attracts as many as 50,000 diners from Onondaga, Cortland, Madison, Oneida, and Oswego counties.
“It’s amazing to see how much Downtown Dining Weeks has grown since its 2005 inception,” Merike Treier, executive director of the Downtown Committee of Syracuse Inc., said in the release. “Each year, we field inquiries earlier and earlier about when we’ll be posting our menus to our website. It’s exciting to see how the community looks forward to planning their Downtown Dining Weeks experience(s). The two-week-long celebration of high-quality, locally owned restaurants presents unique opportunities for our community to ‘eat their way’ through the center of our city. Whether they’re trying a new restaurant for the first time, or looking forward to returning to a favorite place, there really is something for everyone.”
Title sponsor, promotion
Endwell–based Visions Federal Credit Union is the title sponsor of Downtown Dining Weeks for the fourth year in a row. The nonprofit has more than 210,000 members across New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, including more than 5,000 members in Onondaga County.
The Downtown Committee and Visions are bringing back the “Spot the Chef’s Hat Promotion.” Each participating Downtown Dining Weeks restaurant has one chef’s hat placed somewhere in its dining area.
Diners are encouraged to spot the chef’s hat, take a picture of it, and email the picture — or a thorough description of its location — to mail@downtownsyracuse.com. All correct guesses will be entered into multiple drawings for gift cards/gift certificates. Winners will be notified via email.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com