Top  MENU-MAKING  Trend

Breakfast, lunch and dinner — so yesterday. Bar and late-night noshing — been there, done that. Now there’s a new game on the menu: one-of-a-kind business-boosters, multi-course bundles and other specials designed to entice guests during these recessionary times and keep them around when things get better.

“There’s nothing worse for business than no business,” says Philippe Boulot, executive chef of The Heathman Restaurant & Bar, located in the historic Heathman Hotel in Portland, Ore. Boulot knows that an empty dining room — the death knell for any struggling restaurant — is a sure sign to potential guests to stay away as well.

Boulot’s strategy to avoid empty seats was to launch the Happy-All-The-Time program, an extension of the restaurant’s existing happy hour and regular menus. With it, Boulot is tapping an important psychological tenet: In tough times, people may want to save money, but they also want to be surrounded by a sense of well-being and energy.

Other savvy restaurateurs are creating slow-day specials to bring in business. Like the blue-plate specials of the last century, today’s enticements offer value, comfort and the fun of something different. For instance, A16 turned San Francisco on its head with Monday-night Meatball Madness, galvanizing other restaurants to follow suit with concepts like Pig-Out Tuesdays at Betelnut, an Asian beer house in the city. Lemon-Brined Fried Chicken is the Monday-night star at Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc in nearby Yountville, Calif.

Bolete, in Bethlehem, Pa., offers wine dinners, a casual tavern menu and a Frugal Foodie Hour program, with a three-course, $35 prix-fixe menu and $1 oysters at the bar. Regular nightly features at Tin Roof Bistro, a new restaurant in Manhattan Beach, Calif., run from Comfort Monday with chicken pot pie and Take-It-Easy Tuesday, a feast of steamed-mussel frites. “The Pope Says Fish on Friday” spotlights wood-fire-roasted, whole striped bass, and “Live-It-Up Saturday” features apricot-braised lamb shank.