For years, Valley diners wondered why Arizona didn’t have a restaurant week promotion like those popular in dozens of large cities across the country.

Suddenly, we have two.

Fifteen Valley restaurants are participating in Yelp Eats!, which starts Monday. For seven days, the restaurants will offer special three-course menus — most typically a choice of an appetizer, entrée and dessert — for a set price of $25.

It’s similar in concept to Arizona Restaurant Week, which debuted last fall and returns Sept. 19-26.

This month’s promotion is sponsored by Yelp, a user review Web site of local businesses. The San Francisco-based site features nearly seven million reviews, about a third of them restaurants.

Yelp employs “community managers” in approximately 25 cities who are tasked with coming up with promotions tailored to their respective markets. Last year, Yelp Eats! was introduced in Chicago.

“Hearing about Chicago’s success with its restaurant week, it seemed like a good fit for the Valley,” says Gabi Kepes, who’s been Yelp’s community manager in Phoenix since November 2007.

Kepes contacted a number of Valley restaurants, and the event was limited to the first 15 to sign up.

“We wanted to keep it small since it was the first time,” Kepes says, adding the week, if successful, may be expanded next year.

The initial participants include some of the Valley’s most highly regarded restaurants, such as The Mission, Roaring Fork, Roka Akor and Digestif.

Digestif, which recently closed to move into a new location, will re-open Wednesday to take part.

Kepes says Yelp’s promotion isn’t meant to compete with the much larger Arizona Restaurant Week, which will feature more than 150 restaurants offering three-course menus for $29.

“We actually tried to work to work with them last year, but it didn’t come to fruition,” she says.

The Yelp Eats! deals will be available to anyone, not just those people (known as “Yelpers”) who post reviews on the Web site. The $25 price does not include tax or tip. Reservations are recommended but not required.

For Yelp, which had 22 million unique users in June, such events are a way of building its brand and increasing its user audience.

“The Phoenix community has grown nine-fold since Gabi was hired,” says Stephanie Ichinose, Yelp’s director of communications. “More than 13,000 reviews of Valley businesses have been posted so far.”

Yelp Eats! participating restaurants
Atlas Bistro, 2515 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale, (480) 990-2433
Cheuvront Restaurant & Wine Bar, 1326 N. Central Ave., Phoenix, (602) 307-0022
Coup des Tartes, 4626 N. 16th St., Phoenix, (602) 212-1082
Digestif, 7133 E. Stetson Drive, Scottsdale, (480) 425-9463
Eddie’s House, 7042 E. Indian School Road, Scottsdale, (480) 946-1622
Metro Brasserie, 7114 E. Stetson Drive, Scottsdale, (480) 994-3663
Pasta Brioni, 4416 N. Miller Road, Scottsdale, (480) 994-0028
Roaring Fork, 4800 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale, (480) 947-0795
Roka Akor, 7299 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale, (480) 306-8800
San Gabriel Mexican Café, 7000 N. 16th St., Phoenix, (602) 371-0111
Sol y Sombra, 20707 N. Pima Road, Scottsdale, (480) 443-5399
The Mission, 3815 N. Brown Ave., Scottsdale, (480) 636-5005
The Vig, 4041 N. 40th St., Phoenix, (602) 553-7227
Un Bacio, 7704 E. Doubletree Ranch, Scottsdale, (480) 609-6969
Z’Tejas, Valley locations in Chandler, Tempe, Scottdale and Phoenix

See all the $25 Yelp Eats! menus here.

Posted in: Valleywide |

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