Summer Restaurant Week. The summer edition of Worcester Restaurant Week takes place Aug. 3-15. For $23.15, you get a three-course meal in more than 40 of Central Massachusetts’ best restaurants. To see which restaurants are participating, visit WorcesterRestaurantWeek.com or Worcester Restaurant Week on Facebook. Sponsors include UniBank, Pepsi, Stella Artois Beer, American Express, Mercadante Funeral Home, Percy’s and Integrity Merchant Solutions.
It’s more than 100. 110 Grill, a modern American restaurant with a trendy casual atmosphere, will open its third location at the Highland Commons Shopping Center in Berlin (Exit 26 off of Interstate 495) in October. Construction of the new 6,000-square-foot, 180-seat restaurant has begun and is expected to be complete in early fall. The other 110 Grill locations are in Chelmsford and Nashua, N.H. The restaurant will feature a spacious 30-seat bar; an outdoor patio, complete with a roaring fire pit; and a private dining room with beautiful sliding glass doors and a TV for presentations.
Taste of Shrewsbury Street. Atlas Distributing, Heineken Light and UBER partnered during the Taste of Shrewsbury Street on June 23 to provide visitors with a special one-time promotion code in an effort to promote responsible drinking. By using the promotional code, new UBER users received $25 off their first ride with UBER. More than 18 Shrewsbury Street restaurants promoted this responsibility initiative.
Whose Muse? It looks like Downtown Worcester will be getting a couple of new bars. The Muse is set to open in the space that formerly housed Jak’s Pub. Prior to that, it was home to the Red Baron for decades. The Muse will be owned by John Rinaldo.
Worcester Woman on Master Chef. Brianna Watson will be featured in the FOX Network reality show Master Chef, which will air on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. Watson was formerly a hairdresser and now works at Seven Hills Foundation in Worcester. Unfortunately, Watson was eliminated in the second round. The show is hosted by English chef and perpetual bad boy Gordon Ramsay. Watson would eventually like to own a food truck.
Speaking of Food Trucks. The Worcester City Council is working on a plan to allow more food trucks in the city. It is setting up food truck-friendly zones, most notably in Downtown near the Common and in the Gateway Park area near WPI. A third location is going to be Elm Park.
DCU Center seeks restaurant operator. Worcester’s DCU Center is seeking a restaurant operator to run a new restaurant in the DCU Center. The space is on the Commercial and Foster streets side of the building. The space is small, and DCU management is looking for the restaurant to be open to the public. The good news is that the city is paying for the build out. The DCU Center is hoping for a mid-September opening date.
What’s brewing? Wormtown Brewery is sponsoring Something’s Brewing, a benefit for Share Our Strength, America’s premier anti-hunger organization. The event will be 7-10 p.m. Aug. 10 at the Hanover Theatre and will feature food from several local restaurants and beer pairing from Wormtown. Tickets are $35 per person.
By Paul Giorgio