RIVER NORTH — She’s a “hero.” She’s “doing the Lord’s work.” She’s “our savior during these dark times.”
She’s Dani Valverde, a 23-year-old consultant in River North who put her statistics degree from the University of Chicago to use in a viral Chicago Restaurant Week 2024 spreadsheet, which explores and ranks over 500 meal deals.
“I really like numbers,” Valverde said. “It was also a question that a lot of people seem really interested in, like, ‘Oh, Restaurant Week feels like kind of a rip off sometimes. Are we actually gonna save money anywhere?’ I was like, ‘Well, I’ll find out.’”
Chicago Restaurant Week is an annual event in which local restaurants offer prix-fixe brunch, lunch and dinner menus for $25-$59. It runs Friday through Feb. 4.
There are over 400 participating restaurants this year and about 550 meal combinations, Valverde said.
During the week between Christmas and New Year’s, Valverde spent about 35 hours combing over the minutiae of the deals, manually searching each and every restaurant and its menus, and putting everything into the spreadsheet.
Valverde priced each item individually on the restaurant’s regular menu to the best of her ability and compared them to the prix-fixe special, taking into factors like meatless options. Her spreadsheet then estimated the deal’s minimum cost, maximum cost and a total range of potential savings for diners — though she doesn’t guarantee the exact accuracy of her work.
Valverde also included information like neighborhood, cuisine type and allergens.
Valverde’s findings are ranked by the top 10 $25 brunch deals, top 10 $25 lunch deals, top 10 $42 dinner deals and top 10 $59 dinner deals, plus the full list of Chicago restaurants.
Among the best deals: brunch at Andros Taverna in Logan Square, lunch at STK in River North, dinner at Mercadito in River North and dinner at Nia in the West Loop.
Another of Valverde’s observations from this year’s spreadsheet: Many of the special menus include deviled eggs, burrata and salmon.
For Valverde’s public service to this food-driven city, Reddit has lauded her as a hero.
“It’s really crazy, honestly; it’s really exciting and definitely very positive,” she said. “When I first started doing it, I wasn’t sure anybody would care. Quite frankly, I was just like, ‘I’ll just post a spreadsheet and see what happens, and people might call me ridiculous, stupid.’ And then it was the complete opposite.”
Culinary Number-Cruncher
Raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Valverde said her love for Chicago food came during her time as a student in Hyde Park, where she would regularly eat takeout during long hours of studying, particularly food from area restaurants.
That led to restaurant and bar exploration with friends in other parts of the city. Eventually, Valverde created a spreadsheet — different from the Restaurant Week sheet — that tracked her visits, from what she ordered to the vibe of each place, so she could refer to it later when trying to decide what fit her group’s mood.
It’s all part of her love for data, Valverde said.
“I’ll say to my friends, ‘Oh my God, did you guys see this chart?’ And they’re like, ‘No one cares except you,’” she said with a laugh.
Another Reddit user, not Valverde, had already created a helpful Restaurant Week deals guide, but stopped the tradition after the 2022 event. So Valverde took up the torch, building off the other creator’s methodology to produce a new spreadsheet.
After Valverde posted it online, the response was overwhelmingly positive.
“It’s very cool to see the way that this … seems to bring a lot of value to people,” said Valverde, a regular on the data visualization Reddit scene. “Also to see that people are very nerdy and ridiculous about all the different things you can learn about food in Chicago in the same way that I am.”
The labor of love is so intense, Valverde said she hadn’t planned to do the spreadsheet again this year — until people found her contact information and started reaching out via email and social media to request it.
“People were messaging me on Reddit being like, ‘Are you done yet?’” she said. “Which is fine, but it also just got to a point where … I was just honestly excited to get it out and have people stop asking me if I was done or not.”
Serving The Public
Despite Valverde’s best efforts, it was difficult to compare this year’s deals to last year’s due to factors like changes in menu items and pricing, upticks in the price of meat and oil over the last yea, and not knowing portion sizes or a restaurant’s food costs, she said.
Dessert prices were also nearly impossible to find online, so she had to assign an arbitrary number for her calculations.
That’s why Valverde’s spreadsheet offers a range of potential savings rather than a specific number — a change from last year’s methodology.
So, are Restaurant Week deals worth it? That depends on what restaurants and diners want to accomplish, Valverde said.
Is the goal “actually for people to go out and try to save as much money as possible and get as much food as possible, or for restaurants to bring in a bunch of new people that maybe haven’t tried their food before?” she asked. “Or is it to bring more money to restaurants during the slower winter season?”
Maybe all of the above.
Valverde’s goal for eating out during Restaurant Week isn’t to save money, she said.
“I think if I do go … it would actually be to just try a bunch of food from different places,” she said.
Valverde’s shortlist includes Ella Elli in Lakeview, India House in River North, Saba Italian Bar + Kitchen in Logan Square and Frasca Pizzeria + Wine Bar in Lakeview. Her first choice, BOKA Restaurant in Lincoln Park, is already booked.
Valverde said she plans to “wait and see” about doing the spreadsheet again next year. For now, she said she’s happy to put her skills and interests to use for the public — even if it’s gained her an unexpected following.
“It made me realize how much [the spreadsheet] really means to people, and it’s kind of cool to see the way this gets thrown around the city,” Valverde said. “People are like, ‘Oh my co-worker’s husband loves your spreadsheet,’ and I’m like, ‘I just met you, I don’t know how you know who I am.’ But yeah, it’s fun.”
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