Set your alarms. The 30th annual DFW Restaurant Week reveals its full restaurant lineup tomorrow, Thursday, July 16, and reservations open the same day for what has grown into the region’s largest dining event and the second longest running restaurant week in the country.
Three decades in, the formula still works because it was never complicated: more than 160 restaurants across Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, Denton, and Rockwall counties serve special prix fixe menus, and roughly twenty percent of each meal goes to charity. Dallas-area restaurants give to the North Texas Food Bank, while Tarrant County proceeds support Lena Pope, the Fort Worth institution that has served children and families for nearly a century. Over its first 29 years, the event has raised more than $13 million for its partners.
The official week runs August 10 through 16, but calling it a week has been a polite fiction for years. Select restaurants offer an early taste during Preview Weekend, August 6 through 9, and many extend their menus all the way through Labor Day, September 7, turning one week into nearly a month of prix fixe dining.
Each participating restaurant offers at least one of four options. Three-course dinners come in at $49 or $59, with $10 or $12 of each meal donated. Two-course lunches and weekend brunches run $29, with $6 going to charity. At the top sits the $99 Signature Experience dinner, a VIP-level meal that sends $20 per diner to the cause. The donations add up fast when the whole region is eating out.
Starting tomorrow, the full list of participants and their menus goes live at dfwrestaurantweek.com, searchable by cuisine, location, and timing, with reservations bookable through OpenTable or directly with restaurants. One new wrinkle worth knowing this year: diners who join the event’s email list receive a certificate for a complimentary fourth course at participating restaurants, which is the rare marketing signup that pays off in actual food.
“For every dollar raised through participating restaurants, we can provide three meals,” said Trisha Cunningham, president and CEO of the North Texas Food Bank, noting that one in six North Texans faces hunger. That math is the quiet engine of the whole event, and it has been running for thirty years.
For anyone who wants to celebrate the kickoff in person, a public Reservation Day happy hour runs tomorrow from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Stoneleigh Hotel, with passed appetizers from the Lion’s Den, samples from the event’s official beer and wine partners, and a champagne toast at 5. Then the real fun begins: deciding where to book first.
