Restaurant Week rundown

OMG, you guys. I spent almost 20 hours writing this Restaurant Week piece for The Washtenaw Voice and then finally passed it like a kidney stone. Woof.

Anywho, the time is almost here! If you don't really know what Restaurant Week is, here's what you need to know:

• Every single participating restaurant uses $12 for lunch and $25 for dinner as their common ground; a lot of the restaurants, however, will have two-for-$12 lunches and two-for-$25 dinners, so you'd best believe this is a good time to go a-dating.
• ALL of the dinners have, at the very least, three courses. And by three courses, I don't mean three skimpy courses. We're talking the normal portions here.
• It starts on Sunday, Jan. 16 and ends on Friday, Jan. 21.
• A few restaurants extend the offer through the week or start early. If you can't go during the week or find that you've just missed it, call! The deals might still be going.
• Most restaurants don't allow any other special offers to be applied, but a lot of them didn't specify. Check to see when their happy hours are and you could sneak in two three-course meals and a couple drinks for under $35.
• Not all of the restaurants are downtown! For example, Weber's is participating, as well as the sports bar in the Holiday Inn? Weird, but I'll take it.

Anywho, Restaurant Week is my favorite week in Ann Arbor, by far. And not just because it falls on my birthday every year (plus I get work off this year because it's on MLK Day! I have a dream!). In fact, Restaurant Week happens in June too. Of course, it's appreciated waaaay more in January when everything is miserable (except my birthday).

Restaurant Week is really the only time that good 'ole poor kids like us can go to some of these places. The Grange? I've been wanting to go there foreeever, especially since 95 percent of their food is more local than Brady Hoke (see what I did there?). I've lived in this UM-forsaken city for three years now, and never once have I even stepped inside the place.

But! Come Monday at 6:30, I plan on going there and holding my head high, for even I will be able to enjoy such delicacies as ale-braised beef and a fresh goat cheese salad.

I'll have to try and divert attention away from my mom's birthday hat though, which she wears every year to torture me on the anniversary of the day I was so lovingly named Baby Davis. That name really had a nice ring to it. Yes, my whole family is indecisive.

If you want a rundown of all the restaurants, please check out my piece in The Voice. I worked too damn hard summarizing all 40 restaurants (40!) to have it be used as anything less than the Ann Arbor Restaurant Week Bible.