Main Street’s 10 Weeks of Tasty starts on Feb. 22
The 2020 pandemic was the worst of times. But sometimes out of the worst things come the silverest of silver linings.
Beginning later this month, Main Street Wooster will launch its fourth installment of 10 Weeks of Tasty. Local food and drink connoisseurs can make their way to a different participating restaurant and specialty drink shop every Thursday and Friday from Feb. 22 until April 26.
“It started during COVID,” Main Street Wooster project coordinator Kerri Manley said. “We wanted to generate more business with our downtown partners, get more people downtown. Nobody was going out. And it was something to do in the winter when there’s not much else going on.”
The first installments of 10 Weeks of Tasty will be Thursday, Feb. 22 and Friday, Feb. 23 at Bay Lobster’s Café and Fish Market and Boba Bowl, respectively. The festivities will run well into spring, with the final dates set for Thursday, April 25 and Friday, April 26 at TJ’s Restaurant and Worth the Squeeze.
Boba Bowl is a great example of a specialty drink shop, with its unusual menu full of various teas, sparkling waters and slushies. Also in the beverage genre are coffee houses (Caribou, Undergrounds, Sure House), adult beverage places (JAFB Wooster Brewery, Grigio, Lincoln Way Vineyards, The Leaf, Minglewood Distilling) and juice bar Worth the Squeeze.
On the dining side, people also can stop at Broken Rocks Café and Bakery, Buehler’s Towne Market Café, City Square Steakhouse, The Curry Pot, Muddy’s Grillin’ & Chillin’, Omahoma Bob’s Barbecue, Mariola Italian, Spoon Market and TJ’s.
There is some incentive to get to a few of the special nights. Visit www.mainstreetwooster.org/ten-weeks-of-tasty and grab a passport, get five places stamped on their “tasty date” (passports have the entire schedule) and enter in a drawing for 100 “downtown dollars.”
Completed passports should be returned to Main Street Wooster, 377 W. Liberty St., Wooster. For more information visit www.mainstreetwooster.org.
Manley said the events will all be Thursdays and Fridays because those are days all establishments are typically open. The order of the various participants’ days is strictly alphabetical.
Manley said the event has become very popular, not only among the patrons, but also among the businesses. She said finding 20 to participate was no challenge, and people in the community have given good feedback about past versions of the event.
“We’ve had a lot of compliments, not only from the restaurants, but also people who maybe are new to the area or just haven’t been to a lot of the places,” she said. “It gives them an excuse to go out and try something new.”
Manley said not every restaurant or drink establishment that wanted to participate was able to, with spots limited. Those that didn’t will have other opportunities in similar events at other times of the year.
The objective of the 10 Weeks of Tasty, at least from Main Street Wooster’s perspective, is to highlight downtown-area businesses, in this case of the culinary variety. Manley said the event instills a bit of area pride in the businesses and their clientele.
“It definitely is a sense of community,” she said. “All of these things are exciting when one is supporting the other. The businesses are always looking to support each other. They’re working with a restaurant or a gift shop that offers coupons, and you’re going to stop there because you stopped another place. Everyone’s definitely very supportive. It’s a great sense of community that they’re willing to support each other even if they’re competitive with each other.”
The 2024 10 Weeks of Tasty is sponsored by Isaac Cueto, DDS Gateway Dental Care.
