For roughly one week, Naperville diners can savor a little bit of everything the city has to offer with the inaugural Taste of Naperville.
More than two dozen restaurants will offer special deals on some of their signature dishes, with prices as low as $5. The deals kicked off Friday, Oct. 9 and will last until Oct. 18.
Participating restaurants include everything from well-known downtown institutions like Empire Burgers + Brew and Bangkok Village to south Naperville restaurants like Bar Louie and Kabab King Grill.
“I think it matches up nicely where we are with the economy, kind of meeting people where they are at right now with higher gas prices,” said Naperville Development Partnership President Monica Conners. “People are looking for more budget-friendly activities.”
Conners said that the original idea for Taste of Naperville was to do an outdoor festival similar to Taste of Chicago, but that proved to be a too big of an undertaking.
“It’s a big investment for the restaurants, especially having a first one because you don’t know what to expect,” she said.
While there is still interest in doing a larger festival in the future, Conners thinks that this smaller event will still be a huge plus for restaurants and customers and serves as a good precursor to Restaurant Week.
She noted that some businesses that don’t normally participate in Naperville’s Restaurant Week, which is typically held in the winter after the holidays, were participating in Taste of Naperville. That included ice cream shops where the usual prix fixe meal structure associated with restaurant week isn’t feasible.
“This is my first year with this company, so I figure there’s no better way to just get your name out there, have a good time, be part of the community, have everybody bounce back off one another,” said Malachi Aviles, general manager for Tapville Social.
For their offerings, the self-pour franchise will have eight different bites for customers to choose from – all starting at $5. That includes everything from their beer cheese fries to their honey-butter chicken slider.
With deals like that, Aviles said that he hopes to bring in as many customers as possible to Tapville.
“We’ve been here for eight years at this location and some people still don’t know about us,” he said. “A good amount of people in the Naperville area, it’s their first time coming in and it’s a really different concept and they enjoy themselves, so the more (people) that we can bring in, the better it is.”
Bar Louie hopes to see their customer base grow somewhere between 15 to 20% through Taste of Naperville. General Manager Ashley Rambo said business has been steady as of late and while the lifted happy hour ban is helping, she hopes Bar Louie can get a little extra boost through the special Taste of Naperville deals.
“When we saw the opportunity to do this, it was kind of super exciting because we were like, ‘Oh, it’s just like Restaurant Week,’ but it was a little twist, something a little different,” she said. “It was really exciting to hear that it was another thing to offer to get people to come into the doors and be able to try some things that we offer.”
Bar Louie has three $10 deals for Taste of Naperville, which includes bruschetta, cheese quesadilla and Bavarian pretzels with a garlic butter glaze. The business is also offering a $15 deal on their chicken nachos.
“We thought it would be something fun,” Rambo said. “We love to do things with Naperville.”
For a full list of participating restaurants, visit https://dinenaperville.com/taste-of-naperville/ton-participating.php
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