By: By Charlotte Parish and Brennan Carley
Mar. 18 will kick off Boston’s biannual food festival: Restaurant Week 2012. Put on by the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau, Restaurant Week is a communal effort by the restaurants of Boston, over 200 of which participate and create fixed price menus at significant discounts to patrons. A two-course lunch is available for $15.12, a three-course lunch for $20.12, and a three-course dinners for $33.12 (12 cents are added as a reference to the year and many vendors remind patrons that these do not include beverages, tax, or tip).
The tradition began in 2000, and has seen an incredible upswing in participation in recent years, last March’s Restaurant Week topping out at an all time high of 227 restaurants. The Boston event series was the second of its kind, modeled after New York City’s Restaurant Week. Since Boston’s inaugural year, several other cities have joined in the culinary celebration, such as Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport. Pat Moscaritolo, president of Boston’s Visitors Bureau, said that the inspiration for Boston’s Restaurant Week came when the bureau noted a decline in the patronage of high level restaurants more than mid
