Bryan Murphy
Customers dine at Busy Bee Cafe on Wilmington Street while chefs and other staff prepare a menu and food for Triangle Restaurant Week. This is the first year that Busy Bee will be participating in the event which features restaurants from all around Raleigh and the Triangle.
The Triangle is quickly becoming a culinary destination, and Triangle Restaurant Week provides a perfect opportunity to try some of the more than 50 Raleigh restaurants that participate in the event.
With fixed prices for lunch and dinner plates, Restaurant Week gives diners the chance to try a nicer restaurant in the area at a reasonable price for a night out. Menu items can also range from a regular item, seasonal, or a new dish they are trying out for the future.
Damon Butler is the CEO of Triangle Blvd which organizes the event. Butler moved from Cleveland, Ohio, to play soccer for NC State while studying industrial engineering. After working in the computer industry for two years, he left for marketing.
“In engineering you listen to people and try to come up with a solution, while in marketing you listen to the customer and deliver a solution,” Butler said. “It’s not that far off of engineering. It’s solving a problem. Now I do things that I am passionate about.”
Triangle Restaurant Week started in 2008 with 26 restaurants. The event has grown to include 95 restaurants in the Triangle area.
“We’ve become one of the largest and most successful foodie events in the Southeast,” Butler said. “We just thought we could bring the area together with food in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area as a whole. Food is one of the best ways to do that.”
Each restaurant involved in the event only charges $15 for lunch and up to $30 for dinner, which includes a three-course meal. Students from the surrounding areas are enjoying both the quality of the food and the great deals.
“On average a person is going to save a minimum of 20 percent when they go,” Butler said. “Restaurants proportion the food to the price level. You also get the full experience the restaurant is trying to offer.”
Triangle Blvd reaches out to restaurants, but now most restaurants actually reach out to them because of how much the company benefits them. It helps restaurants from all over the Triangle attract new customers and also gives them a chance to go off their regular menu options.
“A lot of restaurants involved are local and independently franchised,” Butler said. “They employ a lot of folks in the Triangle, and in result, they are getting more business to their establishments, which in turn, everyone wins.”
The Lonnie Poole Golf Course restaurant, Terrace Dining Room, will be included in Restaurant Week this year. This is a great opportunity for NC State students to get involved, especially because meal plans can be used at this particular restaurant. Having the restaurant from Lonnie Poole Golf Course on board brings a wider variety of people involved, including college students.
“For Triangle Restaurant Week we are spread out throughout the entire Triangle and surrounding areas,” Butler said. “We like to bring everyone together because downtown Raleigh tends to separate themselves out. If we can make the area better as a whole rather than compete against each other, then we have achieved our goal as Triangle Blvd.”
Food is something that brings people together naturally. Triangle Restaurant Week happens twice a year, with one event in the last week of January and the other the first week of June.
“Unfortunately and fortunately the winter one does a little better,” Butler said. “There is a lot of other events in the summer, and folks tend to go out of town more often. The good thing about it is it’s dead time throughout the country the last week in January for a lot of restaurants.”
To find out which restaurants are participating, visit trirestaurantweek.com