Restaurant Week

LA's loaded with great restaurants, but trying them all would leave you so broke, you'd have to take a night job de-beaking birds for El Pollo Loco. Your window of affordability: LA's first-ever Restaurant Week, taking reservations tomorrow.

RW entails 100 upstanding restaurants, each offering heavily discounted, 3-course prix fixes; the deal actually runs Jan 27-Feb 1 and Feb 3-8, but after intensive research, the organizers concluded "Two Almost-Weeks Separated by Saturday" was a money-loser. Participants're slotted into tiers with Starbucks-like nomenclature, "Premier Dining" for $25 lunch/$34 dinner, or "Deluxe Dining" for $15/$22 -- not quite as high-end, but clearly still worthy of a purple descriptor. Resto's include Crustacean (sample menu: Spicy Cucumber Tuna Roll, Eggplant Ratatouillie, Godiva Walnut Cake), Simon LA (Lump Crab Salad, Braised Beef Short Rib, Glazed Doughnut Bread Pudding), and Ford's Filling Station, which sadly won't be serving Wild Bill's Beef Strips with Big League Chew Compote.

A few caveats: some spots offer the deal dinner-only, and, of course, taxes, gratuity, and beverages are excluded -- but that's cool, because you drank, like, five large Nesteas before you punched out of eltrabajo loco.