A software engineer hacked D.C. Restaurant Week — and built a better guide
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Love, Makoto and its Restaurant Week sushi are among the top searched items on Let's Eat, DC — a new guide. Photo: Deb Lindsey for the Washington Post via Getty Images
We food writers have plenty of Restaurant Week hacks, but it took a software engineer to truly crack the code on D.C.’s event.
Why it matters: Like the D.C. tech wonks building better versions of the city's apps, Adam Stambouli tackled one of Restaurant Week's biggest headaches: searching hundreds of menus scattered across the internet.
- His free new site Let's Eat, DC lets diners hunt for specific dishes, new restaurants, highly rated spots, dietary options and good deals.
Driving the news: The site launched ahead of the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington's Summer Restaurant Week, running Aug. 24-Aug.30, with 385 restaurants, over 580 menus and 7,600+ dishes parsed into structured data.
- The site pulls menus from RAMW’s directory and restaurants' own websites, re-checking them nightly.
How it works: Search “steak,” "vegan" or "sushi" to find exactly what you're craving across individual menus — or sort through options via tabs like “date night” and “family style.”
- Stambouli also layers in signals like Michelin recognition and local critics' lists, and is developing a system for identifying Restaurant Week menus that offer particularly good value.
Zoom in: Stambouli, the software engineer behind D.C. design shop First Press Studio, tried to tackle Restaurant Week’s menu problem about three years ago— but the tech wasn’t there.
- Then AI coding became part of his everyday work. It took him "like a day" of tinkering to find the momentum to build the site, Stambouli tells Axios.
The tech: Stambouli uses a nightly data pull to check Restaurant Week listings, while Claude helps turn wildly different menu formats into standardized, searchable information.
- When restaurants don't upload menus to the official directory, the system can look for them on restaurant websites.
- That's important because, just days away, 78 restaurants still didn't have a current menu posted.
The intrigue: Scan thousands of Restaurant Week menus and patterns emerge — revealing some of the economics behind one of D.C.’s biggest dining promotions.
- “Restaurant Week is a lot of the same playbook, because we all get the same filets of salmon at a discount, the same freezer closeouts,” chef Rob Rubba recently told Axios of his years working in popular D.C. restaurants.
- Purveyors plan for the rush, too, stocking ingredients restaurants can buy at Restaurant Week-friendly prices. “That’s why a lot of menus look the same,” Rubba says.
Yes, but: That doesn't mean restaurants are skimping on quality. Especially in summer, Restaurant Week is a balancing act of seasonality, scale and price.
By the numbers: Stambouli's data offers a rare look at what that produces across the city:
🍅 Tomato summer: 978 dishes at 212 restaurants mention tomatoes — roughly one in eight dishes citywide.
- Nearly 40 restaurants are serving gazpacho.
🍗 Chicken rules: It's the protein champ — and often cheapest — appearing in 640 dishes at 237 restaurants, followed by shrimp (333 dishes), beef (287) and salmon (274).
- Halibut? Just five dishes.
🥗 The Caesar salad index: 83 restaurants are serving one, roughly one in four restaurants — they’re popular and can be cheap.
✨ Fancy pants: Truffle appears in 166 dishes, Wagyu in 66, and caviar in 29.
🍫 For dessert: Chocolate appears in nearly 360 dishes — big mousse energy!
Fun fact: Restaurant Week's favorite adjective may be "crispy," which appears in 419 descriptions.
Follow the money: Restaurant Week doesn’t always mean bargain week.
- 31% of restaurants place an upcharge — average $11 — for at least one dish.
- The most common dinner price is $55, while Moon Rabbit has the priciest offering at $105.
- Diners seem more interested in value than accolades: The new site's "generous value" filter has been used 713 times, compared with 377 clicks of its Michelin/James Beard filter.
Meanwhile, 30 restaurants are extending their deals beyond Aug. 30.
What people want: Since launch, Love, Makoto is the site's most-viewed restaurant, followed by L'Ardente and Casa Teresa.
- Yes, but: Cana leads booking clicks.
What’s next: Stambouli plans to keep Let's Eat, DC free and bring it back for future Restaurant Weeks, and is exploring neighborhood promotions like Alexandria Restaurant Week.
- He's also refining the site's "good deal" feature into a “deal score” that could make it easier to compare savings across restaurants.
The bottom line: Stambouli built the site he wanted as a diner.
- And after 15+ years of covering Restaurant Week — opening menu PDFs, Instagram posts and websites in 40 different tabs — I’m grateful he did.