New Wichita Restaurant Week event starts Friday, offers excuse to try 14 different places
If you haven’t had a chance to visit College Hill’s hot new restaurant The Belmont or if it’s been too long since your last meeting with The Artichoke’s Famous #8, you have a perfect excuse to change that starting this weekend.
On Friday, Junior League of Wichita is launching a new Restaurant Week event it’s calling Taste of Wichita. The event, organized by members who love Kansas City’s restaurant week, invites participants to visit 14 restaurants over 10 days and try their food for a set price.
The menus are listed at tasteofwichita.org, and most offer a three-course dinner that includes an appetizer, main dish and dessert for $30. Lunchtime and lighter dinner specials that cost $15 also are offered by some of the participating restaurants.
Vora Restaurant European at 3252 E. Douglas, for example, is offering customers a dinner menu that includes a half Italian salad, a choice of chicken Marsala with mashed potatoes and green beans or pesto salmon with rice pilaf and asparagus — plus tiramisu for dessert — for $30.
The Artichoke at 811 N. Broadway, meanwhile, is offering a $15 menu for either lunch or dinner that includes choice of sandwich, choice of side and choice of cookies or cheesecake for dessert.
The restaurants participating, in addition to The Belmont, Vora and The Artichoke, are 6S Steakhouse, Bonefish Grill, College Hill Deli, Georges French Bistro, Lola’s Bistro, Molino’s Cuisine, Prost, The Rusty Nail, Sapporo, Two Olives and Wine Dive.
The restaurants have all been asked to make the meals available for dine-in or to-go customers.
Junior League dreamed up Taste of Wichita as a replacement for Holiday Galleria, a shopping event that for the past 16 years has drawn big crowds to Century II in early October. It’s the group’s biggest fundraiser.
Because big crowds are not COVID-friendly, the event was canceled for this year, but the organization wanted to find a supplemental money maker that would help members support their charity work. They’re planning to bring Holiday Galleria back in 2021.
Each restaurant participating will pay a fee to the Junior League and also will donate 10 percent of sales from its Taste of Wichita menu offerings. Most of the proceeds will go to Homeless to Hope, a group that finds permanent housing for homeless women.
This is not Wichita’s first go-round with the Restaurant Week concept, which is popular in larger cities and is meant to get people out and trying restaurants they might not otherwise have the inclination or cash to visit. The most notable was put on by Visit Wichita, whose Restaurant Week had a four-year run that ended in 2017.
Junior League members say they hope Taste of Wichita will become an annual event and will grow bigger in years to come.
Diners who want to take part just need to visit the listed restaurants from Friday through Oct. 11 and ask for the Taste of Wichita meal. People are encouraged to call the individual restaurants for reservations.
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