Originally Posted by
elitetraveler
Restaurant Week is a legacy of a pre-Internet promotion designed to drive traffic during slower periods, get folks from the burbs into the city to drive extra spending, and showcase (back in 92 when it started) that NY had an increasingly energetic food scene. I believe a big proponent was Tim Zagat who obviously wanted to push his Zagat guides.
Whether it is still relevant today or not I have no idea, but I suppose nobody has come up with a better idea to replace it and there is still enough participation that it continues.
In the 90s I would debate that restaurants put out "lower quality" versions of regular fare. In fact, my recollection is that I was generally pleasantly surprised, as if the restaurants viewed is as an opportunity to perhaps introduce themselves to people who weren't in their regular customer target.
To be fair, although I'm not a fan of Restaurant Week (as my posts in this thread must make clear), I have no doubt that there are some restaurants today that serve up really good meals at a bargain price during Restaurant Week. I'm just not interested in finding the needle in the haystack. I'd much rather go to a place where the kitchen is allowed to do its thing and charge what it thinks is a fair price, which, of course, I can choose to pay (by going) or not (by not going).