The name still undersells it a little. It lasts two weeks, not one, but it’s a pretty great opportunity to try somewhere new or go back to an old favorite. This spring’s run, April 19-May 2, brings curated menus priced at $20, $35, $50, and $65 to restaurants, bars, cafes, food trucks, and pop-ups across greater Seattle.

Seattle Restaurant Week began in 2010, when a group of local chefs and restaurateurs came together to support more restaurants during the slower shoulder seasons in spring and fall. The biannual event is now organized through Seattle Good Business Network’s Good Food Economy program.

In 2022, it expanded to two weeks and opened up its pricing to the range of fixed prices we see today. It also sprawled beyond Seattle proper, giving diners more options and restaurants more flexibility in how they built their menus and whether they could take part at all. This year, participating spots reach as far north as Lynnwood and as far south as Bonney Lake.

Spring brings an abundance of fresh ingredients, so menus are already changing this time of year. That also makes Restaurant Week trickier for chefs, who have to get creative as they build fixed-price menus while ingredient costs are high. Many of the participants already have their menus posted, so you can look around and see what sounds good.

The site also makes it easy to narrow things down. Diners can filter by neighborhood, cuisine, cost, dining format, dietary preferences, ownership, meal type, and values programs. Those include Give a Meal for places supporting community meals, Eat Local First for restaurants committed to local sourcing, and EnviroStars for businesses recognized for greener practices.

If you want a few places to start, send these to the group chat and see where you all end up. But really, the most fun is probably in trying somewhere new, especially a place you’ve never heard of.

• Cafe Campagne has both a $50 lunch and a $50 dinner, and it remains one of the best places to eat in Seattle.
• For those up north, Kazoku in Edmonds has a $65 dinner menu.
• Filipino restaurant Kilig in Chinatown-International District is offering a $35 dinner menu.
• Neb is offering a $50 dinner menu. We just featured its spring gnocchi on our 5 Dishes to Try in April list.
• Palace Kitchen has a $50 dinner menu and just celebrated 30 years. That is a long run, and worth toasting.
• Picklewood Paddle Club, which opened earlier this year, is offering a $20 lunch and a $35 dinner. Go for Ethan Stowell’s food, then work some of it off on the court.
• WeRise Wine Bar has a $50 dinner menu. Jamila Conley, the force behind WeRise, is on this year’s Most Influential list.
• Pidgin Cooperative Restaurant & Bottle Shop is doing both lunch and dinner at $50. Seth and Zach Pacleb, the brothers who launched the employee-owned restaurant and bottle shop, also landed on our Most Influential list earlier this year.