Chris Risner . Com

From September 18th through the 27th, several (17) of Detroit’s “finest” restaurants are taking part in an event known as “Restaurant Week”.  RW is basically a “week” of preset and cheap offerings from pretty nice restaurants with the goal of getting you to experience places you normally might not (and then come back and spend big money there).  As I only found out about RW today and I have a pretty packed weekend, I went about trying to figure out which of these restaurants Erin and I could hit up this week.  After checking out the list and getting some recommendations from people, I first wanted to go to the Rattlesnake Club.  The entree options there included a 14oz strip steak and a 1.25 lb Maine lobster: tasty.  Alas, it wasn’t meant to be as they were already booked for the rest of the weekend.  Evaluating the rest of the places led to us deciding upon the Whitney.  TW doesn’t offer any parking at the actual location outside of valet.  Oddly enough the entrance and exit for valet are the same single lane so try not to run into another car.  We both knew what we were going to order off the minimal list before we arrived so the only thing we had to decide upon was what to drink.  Being fans of Cabernet we looked there first.  The cheapest bottle was $35 which we ordered.  A few minutes later the waitress returned to tell us that they were out (despite them later serving it by the glass to a couple sitting behind us) but brought the next bottle up (which we were fully charged for).  The food and service were pretty good.  That being said, I don’t think I’d be happy paying $50+ per person for what we got for $27 each.  The location is pretty dark due to the dark color of the wood but very classy as well. While seating another group one of the servers actually showed them a hidden vault hidden behind one of the very old house’s walls.  So while the Whitney was good, I wish we’d had a chance to try some of the other restaurants and look forward to Restaurant Week 2010.