If it’s deep winter, it must be Winterlicious. This resto promotion, along with Summerlicious, was started by the city in 2003 to combat the post-Sars slump and seasonal doldrums. It sounded, as so many government initiatives do, patronizing, as if the restos on their own have trouble hacking it (Of course if government didn’t overtax restaurants, control wine, etc. restaurants would do much better!)

Even so the idea of a $35 dinner at a place where the bill usually went north of $100 was peachy, but realistically I knew there was no free lunch. Sure enough, the noise was often negative. A couple of years ago I was taken to a restaurant where we ate the ordinary menu but the service was lousy because the owner complained he was overwhelmed by Winterlicious patrons. As if they were on welfare. That’s how some Winterlicious patrons were and still are made to feel, and some restaurants are serving lesser food and smaller portions.


So when a pal actually called me on his cell phone from Oro and said “You can’t miss this twenty buck lunch” I sat up. And the mails kept coming even from my editor who, after visits to Boba and the Globe Bistro, asked why couldn’t she eat like this all the time? These restos aren’t offering inferior food at all, they are simply charging less.    more »