CISA Local Hero Restaurant Days

Tonight is the first of  two nights that we are celebrating  CISA's Local Hero Restaurant Days.  It's an event designed to show the important tie between  restaurants and the farmers.  The goal is that everyone taking part will design a dish based on some local ingredients.  We call ours, well, our menu.  It is a great idea for the restaurants who aren't accustomed to using local ingredients, but when your cuisine is as dedicated to local as ours is, it can somehow seem less special.  Last year we offered a three-course prix fixe menu as well as our regular menu.  Only two customers ordered off the "special menu", and neither of them came because of the event.  The rest were dining as if a normal night.  This year CISA did a more effective job of promoting on a their tight budget and it showed.  Of course, the fact that we were on the radio with the director of CISA and told the Valley that we were going to offer our entire menu as a $25 prix fixe didn't hurt.  Kind of like a restaurant week but with a cause.  I am happy to say it was an excellent turn out tonight, maybe next year we will do it for a week and forget about restaurant week...