Since Seven Days held the first Vermont Restaurant Week in 2010, a spate of similar shindigs have sprung up around the region — including weeklong events in New Hampshire, Killington and now, Manchester.

This is clearly a welcome phenomenon for those of us who live to eat. Usually scheduled to coincide with slower times of year — i.e., mud season and stick season — restaurant weeks offer perfect windows during which to chow down at places hitherto unknown to the people of this area (to quote Frank Zappa).

At least a dozen restaurants are taking part in Manchester’s first Restaurant Week, offering three-course, prix-fixe meals that cost $20.12 at lunch (clever) and $30.12 for dinner. For those who’ve never ventured there, the town is a food mecca, a liminal zone where top Vermont ingredients collide with the polished, classical techniques expected by tourists from points south. As far as I can tell, stick season is the only reason that some of the dining rooms in Manchester appeared half-empty last night, at least from the road; the two meals (!) I ate there were both spectacular, albeit in different ways. 

Corin Hirsch was a Seven Days food writer 2011 through 2016. She was also a dining critic and drinks columnist at Newsday from 2017 to 2022, and contributes to The Guardian, Wine Enthusiast and other publications. She’s spoken often on colonial era drinking and is the author of Forgotten Drinks of Colonial New England, published by History Press in 2014.