Start Making Chicago Restaurant Week Reservations Now

By Anthony Todd in Food on Jan 7, 2013 4:00PM

It's that time again. Chicago's best restaurants are putting on discounted prix fixe menus for Chicago Restaurant Week during the week of Feb. 1-10 and reservations will sell out quickly.

As in previous years, Restaurant "week" is actually restaurant "10-days," increasing availability for diners and the duration of suffering chefs and servers. (Is there a convenient word, like "fortnight," that describes a 10-day period?) Anyway, all you care about is that this means more reservations. Prices have stayed the same: $22 for lunch and either $33 or $44 for dinner, depending on how fancypants the restaurant is.

The complete list of restaurants is available online, as are many of the menus. A bunch of the restaurants that have opened since Restaurant Week 2012 are participating, including BellyQ, Carriage House, City Tavern, Cru, Embeya, The Lobby, Nellcote, RPM Italian and Untitled. They are nestled alongside a ton of old favorites, and if you're the type who keeps a long restaurant wish list, this is the week to begin checking things off.

Restaurant Week inspires mixed feelings among our food and drink staff. Prices are low, but selection is limited and crowding is high, especially if a restaurant has a tough time managing the hordes. Amy and John absolutely hate it, but many of our staff go out multiple times during the week. If you are interested in our humble picks, here are our favorite menus from last year. We'll have some picks for our favorite restaurant week menus of 2013 by the end of this week, so keep an eye out.