Birmingham Restaurant Week Wrap-Up

Birmingham Restaurant Week logo

Today marks the end of the first-ever Birmingham Restaurant Week. For reviews of some participating restaurants from me and others, visit the Birmingham magazine Good Taste blog.

Brick & Tin sandwich
Catalan sandwich from Brick & Tin

I was thrilled when I heard about the inaugural Birmingham Restaurant Week, and I’ve been taking advantage as much as I possibly could. There were lots of great things about the event, but the impression I get is that it didn’t run quite as smoothly as it could have. In hopes of helping improve next year’s Restaurant Week and eliciting some feedback from Birmingham’s foodie community, here are my thoughts on what succeeded and what didn’t.

First, the good:

The food. Birmingham Restaurant Week popped up seemingly out of nowhere about six weeks ago as far as I can tell, but it managed to assemble a nice list of several dozen participating restaurants, including most of the best (and best-known) spots in town. Urban Standard wins the BRW enthusiasm award for creating a new sandwich and a new dessert just for this week. (Let’s hope the Urban Cuban and the Shakerato stick around.) Most other participants just created a prix-fixe menu out of dishes they serve normally, but that’s okay—the point of a restaurant week is to get people to come back to the places they tried during the week.

shrimp from Veranda on Highland
Gulf shrimp from Veranda on Highland (sorry about the bad photo; it was dark in there.)

It really was a good value. I worried that the fancier restaurants’ menus would feel thrown-together and disappointing, but they did a very satisfying job. The $30.10 menus at places like Veranda, Highlands, Bottega, and Little Savannah let guests eat there for significantly less than normally, but still tasted like what you’d get ordering from the regular menu. The $20.10  and $10.10 menus represented a nice savings, too—you might spend 10 bucks for lunch at a Brick & Tin or Brannon’s at any other time, but you wouldn’t get dessert thrown in.

There was definite buzz. Twitter’s been humming with people making plans to eat together and how much they loved what they had. Eatbhm, for one, put together lots of large group outings. Without social media, BRW wouldn’t have been able to exist.

And the not-so-good:

Grilled tripletail from Crestline Seafood Company
Grilled tripletail from Crestline Seafood Company

Confusion. Half the restaurants I went to weren’t entirely clear about their own BRW participation. My waiter at Crestline Seafood Company had no idea what I was talking about when I asked about their menu, and when he asked the owner, the owner had to check the BRW poster in his front window to make sure the week was still going on. I tried to go to V. Richard’s for lunch, only to be told the BRW menu was just for dinner. These restaurants presumably paid to be part of BRW; they really should be trying harder to get customers to take advantage.

Event problems. The BRW opening party sounded great on paper, but the venue was way too small for all the people that came and all the restaurant tables that were set up. And there were two small trash cans, about 10 tables, and maybe 25 chairs to accomodate well over a hundred people, all of whom had plates stacked high with food and nowhere to eat it. This was a preview party, pitched to the press and sponsor companies; I think next year it should be a kick-off party, for the community at large—throw it someplace huge (Railroad Park?) with plenty of room for all the food, make it last more than an hour and a half, and get as many people as possible to come. That’s how you build buzz. And other events during the week would have been nice, too: Maybe some cooking demos or classes, wine tastings, chef meet-and-greets, that sort of thing?

Lack of diversity. There were a few Mexican, Mediterranean, and sushi restaurants on the list, but the BRW participants were pretty much all places everyone in town knows—all very “safe.” Where are the more authentic and exotic ethnic restaurants? Next year, I want to see places like Mr. Chen’s, Ginza, George’s, Saigon Noodle House, and at least one Indian restaurant in the mix. Heck, why not try to get one of the taco trucks to come out?

What was with the bars? BRW has three bars listed on its website, but it’s not really clear what their participation means—are they offering drink specials? Honestly, throwing bars into a restaurant week just confuses things. Unless they’re serving food, leave ’em out next time.

Ribs from Dreamland Bar-B-Que
Ribs from Dreamland Bar-B-Que

Wow, it sounds like I’m really down on this thing. But I’m not! I’m excited that this town managed to pull off a restaurant week that looks to have been a success, and I’m already looking forward to Birmingham Restaurant Week 2011.

I think all the problems with BRW boil down to one thing: Lack of planning. This event really seems to have come out of nowhere with just a couple months before it started. New restaurants were being added less than a week before the beginning.

If I were the folks that run BRW (and I hope they’re reading this), I’d be working on securing next year’s restaurants already. Turn the website into a blog promoting your event during the off-season—post some interviews with chefs, recipes, and so on.

Early planning would also allow for the printing of a restaurant week menu guide, something that was sorely lacking this year. Give folks a booklet full of menus and they’ll plan their whole week of eating out instead of forgetting it was restaurant week at all. (Plus you can fill it with sponsor ads and make some dough!)

5 thoughts on “Birmingham Restaurant Week Wrap-Up”

  1. I really didn’t like the level of service at some of the restaurants either. Like the server at Veranda lying to us. We went on a Tuesday, a day of the week that Veranda does half-price bottles of wine. We asked our server if half-bottles were half-price–there were just two of us, and we didn’t really want a whole bottle. Our server told us, no, half-bottles were full price, when a nearby table (who ordered from the more expensive regular menu) was told that half-bottles of wine were indeed half off. If I ever get him as a server again, I’m going to ask to be moved to someone else’s section. It really is unfortunate that they pool tips, because that guy deserved NOTHING.

  2. I know I’m picky, but the web site was tragic. Errors that led into server paths, missing menus, no dates listed except on the home page, that sad little logo, and where were the gorgeous photos of food? With all that amazing content and sponsor money to boot, it should have been a user-friendly showpiece. You could do it in a week. It should have also had editorial content–if I’ve never been to these restaurants, I might need help choosing which ones to try. Sharing it on Facebook yielded a giant block of text, and their social media was half-hearted at best.

    The food, however, was delicious! At both the Veranda and Highlands we stuck with the restaurant week menu but added another appetizer we wanted to try. We had a great time and will definitely go back to both places.

    1. Jen, the website was pretty bad, but they did fix the missing menus and errors just as the week was starting. As of right now, every menu is up and I haven’t gotten one of those server errors in a week or two.

      But you’re absolutely right; the site needs better organization and more pictures. Hey, Bham Restaurant Week, I know a local blogger, writer, and social-media guy called the Messy Epicure who’d love to help you out…

  3. I completely agree about planning being a real issue of restaurant week. There were several big disappointments that arose from just the organization of the week. Many places I tried to go to were only lunch or only dinner, and it made life complicated. I ended up having to jump to other places or pay full price for the same menu.

    Overall, I got to try a lot of places I never have eaten at before. At the same time, there were so many technical issues that I didn’t normally experience (undercooked or overcooked food) that I don’t feel very positive about some of these restaurants now. I think the lack of organization may have thrown them through the loop.

  4. Many good points, especially about the ethnic restaurants. Overall it was a great way to sample new places around the city. Maybe the planning issues will be smoothed out by next year.

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