The Restaurant Week gambit is so old that it has been co-opted by cities across the country and abroad and even by New York City boroughs and neighborhoods. But the prospect of a discounted gourmet meal still tickles the taste buds of savvy foodies like Radha Day.

Ms. Day was a teenager living in Italy when business leaders in New York cooked up the inaugural Restaurant Week in the summer of 1992. But since she arrived here a decade ago, she has faithfully sampled prix fixe menus in aspirational dining rooms around the city.

She can describe with relish each course of the first Restaurant Week lunch she enjoyed in 2007 and already knows where she will partake when this year’s edition of the expanded promotion begins this month. The 390 participating restaurants officially begin taking reservations Monday morning, but Ms. Day and her colleagues at the United Nations got a head start.

The table they have their sights set on is at Riverpark, an East Side creation of celebrity chef Tom Colicchio that has posted its Restaurant Week offerings. So, Ms. Day already has her palate primed for the octopus carpaccio appetizer and the zucca filled with patty pan squash.