NH Restaurant Week Starts Now

Restaurants across the state are banding together to encourage diners to nosh, nibble and mangia their way across the Granite State. The NH Lodging & Restaurant Association (NHLRA) is offering the first statewide Restaurant Week May 18 through 25 to shine a spotlight on the diversity of dining people can enjoy.

More than 130 restaurants, as well as some hotels, are participating, with more being added, says Mike Somers, president and CEO of NHLRA. During the week, each restaurant will offer their take on a special three-course prix fixe menu. Restaurants can participate at three levels, offering menus that are worth $10, $15 or $20 for lunch and $15, $25, or $35 for dinner.

Participating restaurants are listed at www.restaurantweeknh.com, along with their prix fixe menus and a one-to-three fork rating showing price levels. On the website, people can search for participating restaurants by city, region or type of food.

During Restaurant Week the NHLRA will also be featuring NH Chef's Rock, profiling 10 celebrity chefs around NH on its website. This is an opportunity to get to know these chefs better and to get recipes from them, Somers says, as the chefs will be part of the media blitz.

 The NHLRA is hoping Restaurant Week will raise awareness of the role restaurants play in NH's tourism industry. Somers says research has shown that among visitor impressions of NH, dining ranks low on the list. We have great restaurants in New Hampshire, but we don't do a great job of telling people about that, Somers says. We want to raise awareness of the great options we have here.

A lot of people don't realize how important the hospitality industry is to the state of New Hampshire. We bring in millions in rooms and meals taxes. It's a tremendous economic engine for the state, says Tom Boucher, president and owner of Great NH Restaurants (T-Bones, Cactus Jack's and The Copper Door), and chairman of the NHLRA Restaurant Week committee.

Eric Roberts, owner and president of Lui Lui, with locations in West Lebanon and Nashua and 140 employees, says while individual towns and cities in NH host local Restaurant Weeks, the statewide program allows restaurants from any community in the state to participate and reap the benefits of the joint marketing program. We hope guests in the state and just south of us in Massachusetts and north in Vermont will try something new. We're hoping people who eat out once or twice a week will eat out three or four times that week and take advantage of these packages, Roberts says. Roberts adds he is hoping to see a 10 percent bump in business at his two Lui Lui locations during NH Restaurant Week and he may extend the prix fixe menus at his locations for another week. For updates on Restaurant Week via social media, follow on Twitter at twitter.com/RestaurantsNH or on Facebook at facebook.com/RestaurantWeekNH.