The 13th annual Chicago Restaurant Week begins Jan. 24 and runs through Feb. 9. With more than 400 participating restaurants, a week wasn’t enough time for this celebration of Chicago’s culinary scene, the largest restaurant week in the nation.

ID 137005896 © Naufal Hudallah | Dreamstime.com

Local restaurants offer special fixed-price menus for brunch, lunch and dinner. These multicourse meals are $24 for brunch or lunch and $36 and/or $48 for dinner. This is the best way to sample a lot of great food at reasonable prices.

My friends and I always start making plans for our meals as soon as the restaurant list is announced. Much like Restaurant Week, we add more restaurants every year. The menus are announced well ahead of time, making it easier to make our selections. This also builds the anticipation for specific meals.

Always in search of great pizza, we picked l’Aventino, Pizzeria Portofino, Roberts Pizza Company and Stella Barra Pizzeria. For other ethnic meals, we decided on Mirabella for Italian, Old Pueblo Cantina for Mexican, Avli River North for Greek and Mei’s for Asian. We will probably pick a couple more, once we are together at the first meal.

Restaurant Week gives us a great reason to get together and to go to different parts of Chicago. Most importantly, though, it gives us the opportunity to sample a lot of different food at new places for us.

— John Wroblewski, online writer