In case you missed last year's Restaurant Week you can be glad to know it's back for the second year.

The first thing you should know is that Restaurant Week is a downtown Grand Junction promotion focusing exclusively on downtown restaurants. It's one way to encourage residents to visit downtown and to check out some of the cool restaurants that might be off your Friday or Saturday night dinner out radar.

If you're like me, when it comes to eating out, you tend to go to the same group of restaurants week after week, month after month. We need a little boost to get out of our box and our comfort zone. This is the kick in the pants we need.

Here's how it works.

Between March 1 and 10, you pick up a passport at any of the participating restaurants, select retail shops, or the downtown Grand Junction office at 437 Colorado Avenue.

Each time you eat at a participating restaurant during the week and purchase a qualifying meal, you get a stamp. The more stamps you collect during the week the bigger the prize you could win.

Anyone who collects at least 7 stamps will have a chance to win a $500 gift card. If you get 4 stamps, you have a chance to win a $200 gift card, 3 stamps a $100 gift card, and fewer than 3 stamps you have a chance to win a $50 gift card.

Here's a list of the participating restaurants.

*The Winery
*Pablo's Pizza
*Goat and Clover Tavern
*Be Sweet Cafe & Bakeshop
*Le Rouge
*Rockslide
*Dream Cafe
*Junct'n Square Pizza
*Suehiro
*Cafe Sol
*Main Street Bagels
*626 on Rood
*Enstrom's
*Blue Moon
*Fiesty Pint
*Il Bistro Italiano
*Bin 707 Foodbar
*Taco Party
*Gelato Junction
*Tapas MX

Lots of great options to choose from, but a short time to visit, so don't put it off. No doubt there are restaurants on that list you haven't tried and this is a good excuse to try something new. Of course, maybe you already have a favorite or two on the list so you can experience some new as well as something more familiar.

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