Triangle Restaurant Week: May 17-23
I have often been disappointed by Restaurant Week meals, but if you pick well there are some excellent deals. Plus, sometimes it’s good to have an excuse to try something new (and, perhaps, even make a trip to Raleigh).
http://www.trirestaurantweek.com/
Durham restaurants:
· Blue Corn Café
· Chamas Churrascaria
· Dos Perros
· Metro 8 Steakhouse
· Parizade
· Piazza Italia Durham
· Piedmont
· Pop’s Durham
· Rue Cler
· Six Plates
· Taverna Nikos
· Tosca Ristorante
· Vin Rouge
· Watts Grocery
· Blu Seafood and Bar
· Edward Mills Bar & Grill
· Firebirds Durham
· Four Square
· Mt Fuji
· Ruth’s Chris Steak House – Durham
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I generally agree.I generally disagree.
Why, oh why do they keep building ugly, unusable, Flash-only websites for Triangle Restaurant Week?
Last year’s was awful, too, if I recall.
I guess they don’t want smartphone users or the visually-impaired to take advantage of the promotion?
[Reply]
Dan – you’ll need Flash to view our videos!!! Relax we gotta mobile site launching in a couple days if you don’t have Flash… And HTML 5 should take care of our videos in mobile environments.
cheers & thanks for the negative posts, we’re doin the best we can over here – the team put in hundreds of hours to make this event bigger and better than last year!
[Reply]
Damon,
The problem with building a flash-only website is that users without Flash installed get absolutely nothing. Most concerningly, it means that anyone who uses accessibility tools, such as those with visual impairments, cannot read any of your content. (There are ways to automagically generate NOFLASH alternative content — Adobe even has examples on their site.)
This also prevents anyone browsing on all but a select few phones with embedded Flash Lite from seeing any information. (There is no Flash plugin for iPhone/iPod/iPad, Android, WebOS (Palm Pre), Blackberry or Windows Mobile. Nothing’s worse when trying to look up a restaurant’s website on your smartphone than being greeted by a missing plugin icon, rather than a usable website.)
I did actually send a constructively critical email, with specific problems and solution suggestions, both this year and last, and received zilch in the way of response.
Now that we’re in the middle of restaurant week, I’m sad to see that the promised mobile site is still MIA, or at the least, there’s no link to it from the blank front page of the main site and there’s no browser detection that redirects it to an alternative mobile site.
After enjoying D.C.’s restaurant week for a number of years, before moving back to Durham, I’d really like to see the Triangle Restaurant Week take off, but I’m concerned that the way in which your website markets the promotion is detrimental — you’re shooting yourselves in the foot for no good reason.
[Reply]
Mobile list has been posted for your review… hope you can understand we’re under limited resources and well underfunded for this year’s event. Let’s keep the focus on the food from here on out eh?
How were some of the restaurants?
Damon,
Ironically, I was at Mt. Fuji for lunch on Tuesday, with six co-workers. Two of us had blackberries, three others, iPhones and none of us knew it was a participating restaurant.
There was no signage to indicate, no mention by the waitress and, of course, none of us could get any info via our smartphones.
My wife and I are planning on hitting either Rue Cler or Vin Rouge tomorrow for dinner, and I’m probably going to take a co-worker to Dos Perros for lunch tomorrow.
—
As far as the website criticism, my point is that if you make it difficult for people to access the information, or are very slow to provide the information for a time-limited event, how can you expect the event to succeed? If participating restaurants don’t see an uptick in patronage during Restaurant Week, because no one knows about it, what incentive is there for them to participate again, next year?
I know how hard it can be to build a successful website, but I’ve also managed to build database-driven sites that get tens-of-thousands of hits a month in less than 30 calendar days, all by my lonesome. If building a fancy site demands too much, given limited time and money, then perhaps a simpler approach, like D.C.’s restaurant week website (which has the added benefits of providing all the information on one, mobile-friendly page) is more appropriate.
As for the mobile “site” — thanks for finally posting it, but, given that part of the point of Restaurant Week is to drive people to restaurants that they might not have tried before, a plain
list without any locations, contact info, or even whether they’re just participating for dinner is kind of useless.I like the concept of Triangle Restaurant Week and though I haven’t participated in the past, I do hope to this year. I think its helpful to know that the restaurant week meals/menus may not be what you may get at a typical dining experience on a non “Triangle Restaurant Week”.
That being said, if I do get to make it to one of these fantastic restaurants next week, I’ll go with realistic expectations.
I also have to agree that the flash only NAVIGATION of the website is just not user friendly, nor is having to download a PDF file of each 3 course menu (which in some cases just says, “sorry the menu hasn’t been received yet”) just to see what’s offered in each restaurant.
[Reply]
We went to Four Square, the Mint, and Il Palio (I believe) last year. Four Square was really good and $25 is a great deal for three course there. We have at least three nights planned this time around.
[Reply]
I’ve been disappointed with the lunch selections. Nothing being offered has looked very exciting nor a good value for $15. I hope someone will suggest a Durham lunch location that might prove me wrong.
[Reply]
I noticed that Chamas, Taverna Nikos and Piazza Italia were all on there so we’re venturing out for lunch at one of those three on Friday.
[Reply]
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