Paul Bass Photo
Restaurant Week diners enjoying al fresco meals on the College Street “promenade” Tuesday afternoon.
You get to enjoy great food, out in public. Restaurant owners and workers get a needed boost. And money flows to hungry families.
That all happens if you buy a meal in this second week of New Haven’s annual “restaurant week.”
City government and business promoters made that pitch at a press event Tuesday held outside College Street Music Hall to pump a series of Downtown public events taking place through this weekend.
Events like: a Friday “night market” bazaar that turned out to be a gas when it debuted last week, bringing people together on Orange Street to end the week together. There’s another one coming this Friday.
Events like: “Sidewalk Saturday” sales on Chapel and on Broadway. (Details here.)
Events like: Eating outdoors in the glorious fall weather. Since the pandemic, the city has developed two “promenades” on closed-off former traffic lanes now filled with outdoor seating by restaurants on College Street and on Orange Street.
And events like: Restaurant Week. New Haven has put this one for 13 years, offering special-price fancy fixe-price lunch and dinner meals at 22 eateries. This year the event is two weeks. We’re halfway through it. It runs through Saturday. (Click here for details.)
“No one has any excuse not to come” this year, said city Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli (pictured), given the weather, the variety of restaurants, the need to support restaurant owners and cooks and waitstaff emerging from the financial pandemic financial …
… and the decision to send part of every meal receipt to CT Food Share, the state’s central food bank. “It’s a win-win-win,” said Lisa Maas (pictured), state president of Citizens Financial Group, the event’s financial sponsor.
CT Food Share CEO Jason Jakubowski (pictured) estimated that 480,000 people in Connecticut are food insecure. That means they’re regularly faced with a choice between paying rent or buying food. It means they at least sometimes go hungry.
Jakubowski attended the event after “having a great lunch with my old friend Lou Mangini at South Bay.”
“This is a very helpful way for us to meet our goals,” he said of Restaurant Week.