Best 2 For $25 Picks- Restaurant Week Grand Rapids

As I promised in my last Restaurant Week post, I want to spend the next week or so highlighting some of my top picks for restaurant week. First up, my favorite 2/$25 menus. These are great because you can have a really affordable date night or afford to take the whole family out for some amazing food. Enjoy!

• CitySēn Lounge: I tried this restaurant last spring and was so impressed with the food, location and atmosphere. It had a big city feel with Grand Rapids prices. Their course offerings for Restaurant Week are impressive considering the price. Start off with truffle fries, sliders, edamame or white bean dip. The main course offers you a vegetarian choice, a seafood option and my personal favorite the flank steak. But it is the dessert options that steal the show. All made with Michigan fruits, they all look delicious. But they pretty much had me at chocolate wine milkshake with Michigan raspberries. Everything about that sounds awesome.
• Pearl Street Grill: For appetizers you will be sharing tomato caprese with locally grown roma tomatoes and basil, eggplant parmesan with locally grown eggplant and cheese, or salmon and roasted sweet corn cakes. For dinner you each get your own plate of either duck, pork tenderloin or shrimp scampi. Finally you can share a dessert of blueberry cobbler, apple crisp or triple chocolate cheesecake.
• Red Jet Café: This is one of my favorite hidden gems in Grand Rapids. And their menu for Restaurant Week will make it clear why. Start out with an appetizer of locally sourced split yellow pea soup, beet salad or sweet potato pancakes. For your entrée you can chose from a vegetarian dish aptly named “late summer”, a slow braised pork shoulder or Great Lakes whitefish. Then end your meal with a Red Jet Café specialty: a miniature assortment of key lime, peanut butter, and pecan pies. Or you can sample some zucchini bread or a coconut milk ice cream sandwich.
• Stella’s/ Viceroy: These two restaurants are connected and share a common locally-sourced menu. And it looks like a good one with plenty of choices to keep you happy. Begin with a shared appetizer of either heirloom tomato salad, BLT nachos, nacho supreme or “poor man’s wings” which are actually amazing sounding potato wedges. Follow that with your choice of a sweet potato burrito wrap, beer braised short ribs, buffalo burger and fries, pork tacos or a “hot stuff” burgers with onion rings and fries. Finally you can share a dessert of either blueberry cobbler or something called “Gooey Cookie Dough Rolls”. Yeah, I’m gonna need some of those.
• Timbers Inn: This is another one of those Grand Rapids restaurants that is off the beaten bath but beloved by locals. Plus one of the appetizer choices is a flight of Michigan beers. Your other choices for starters are Founders mac & cheese, jerk chicken quesadillas or a dip trio. Follow that with a main dish of either Bourbon top sirloin, Jamaican pork loin, chicken risotto or grilled salmon salad. And then there was dessert. Brace yourself, it is a good choice. Peanut Butter Snickers or Bailey’s sorbetto. Can’t choose? Then get the dessert flight with both choices along with chocolate covered strawberries.

Here are the rest of the 2/$25 choices. So what do you think of my picks? Any you would add to the mix?