Table at Ris. Photo by Tom Barnes.

It’s Summer Restaurant Week again! Three-course prix fixe meals can be found all over and outside of the city priced at $20.13 for lunch and $35.13 for dinner from today through Sunday. Some restaurants will extend the deal through the rest of August. It’s a great time to try out a new restaurant or old favorite and find a great deal if you know how to spot one.

We’ve sifted through the over 240 participating restaurants and offer this, our carefully curated guide to some of the best Restaurant Week menus you can find out there. We’ve picked out restaurants that generally offer many or all choices from their regular menu and where the Restaurant Week price is substantially less than what you would pay if ordering the items a la carte. This often isn’t the case. Often your starter and entree will add up to the $20 or $35 meal cost. Throw in an inexpensive dessert the restaurant can mass produce, and there’s your meal without much of a deal. Restaurants we’ve selected have gone the extra mile for the consumer.

But are reservations all gone? That’s often not a problem. A party of one or two can almost always find a seat at the bar, especially for lunch. Last year there was a restaurant I desperately wanted to get into for dinner and calling every hour to see if there were any cancellations got me nowhere. When I showed up in the middle of dinner service, I was seated promptly at one of the restaurants empty tables.

Art and Soul
They do normally offer a $25 power lunch but their $20 RW menu expands on the choices for $5 less. A good place for some cornmeal dusted catfish, fried chicken, or some smoked pork.

Firefly
This inviting Dupont Circle dining room is under the helm of a new chef, native Washingtonian Todd Wiss. There seem to be new dishes on the menu to try along with many holdovers from the previous chef. Lots of the menu is on offer. Some classics including the mini pot roast have supplements, but I’d gladly pass on that to try the smoked lamb shoulder or mussels with smoked homemade boudin, shrimp, and truffle fries. And the desserts aren’t throw away bread puddings. Warm zucchini bread with basil corn ice cream is just one of the delicious-sounding options.

Fogo de Chão
Dinner is normally $51.50 at this Brazilian steakhouse, so paying $35.13 is a superb deal. It’s too late to get a reservation, but show up, smile, and see what happens!

Lincoln
This seasonal small plates restaurant offers a fairly deep selection off their lunch and dinner menus with no up charges and, for dinner, four courses instead of three. Go in for lunch for a grilled Caesar salad with parmesan ice cream, New York strip with truffled beef fat fries, and a brown fudge cake with mocha custard and you’re getting about $40 worth of food for $20.

NoPa Kitchen & Bar
When this space was Zola, it was always a great place to go for restaurant week. Ashok Bajaj recently took over this space and installed NoPa so it’s no wonder it still is. His Knightsbrige Group Restaurants are always game RW participants. Case in point, most entrees are around $25 on NoPa’s menu. Nearly all of the American brasserie’s options can be selected during restaurant week with no upcharges. Plus your appetizer and dessert

Oval Room
Always a can’t miss. Restaurant Week is always a great deal and well executed at this power spot by the White House.

RIS
The selection is not so big, but it does include the expensive chorizo and almond crusted sea scallops or grilled hangar steaks from the regular menu for both lunch and dinner.

The Source
Probably the top rated participating restaurant. Options are more limited than they were this winter when all Saturday dim sum items were available for lunch. Still, it will be hard choosing between velvet corn soup with shrimp dumplings or a spicy tuna hand roll as a starter, and crispy fish bao or garlic and chili chicken as an entree.

Woodward Table
It’s a good week to see what Jeff Buben is up to as he tinkers with Woodward Table. Buben has been playing with the formula for his McPherson Square area restaurant as of late, expanding the number of dishes the kitchen cranks out. That selection extends to restaurant week.