If you've lived in Hillsborough for a few Septembers, you probably think you know what Restaurant Week is. A handful of days in late September, a stack of prix fixe menus taped to front windows along Route 206 and Amwell Road, maybe two dinners out before it wraps up the following Sunday. That's been the shape of it for years.
This year the shape changed, and most residents haven't noticed yet.
Six Days Became Eleven
The Hillsborough Business Association has run Restaurant Week every fall for nine years now, and until this year it kept a tight, predictable window. In 2024 it ran Tuesday, September 24 through Sunday, September 29, six days, 33 restaurants. In 2025, the 8th annual edition ran Tuesday, September 23 through Sunday, September 28, another six-day stretch, this time with 42 restaurants signed up by the time it opened. Go back to 2023 and you get the same pattern: Tuesday, September 26 through Sunday, October 1.
| Year | Dates | Length | Restaurants |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Sept 26 – Oct 1 | 6 days | Not published |
| 2024 | Sept 24 – Sept 29 | 6 days | 33 |
| 2025 | Sept 23 – Sept 28 | 6 days | 42 |
| 2026 | Sept 24 – Oct 4 | 10 days | Registration open through Sept 11 |
This year's 9th annual Restaurant Week runs Thursday, September 24 through Sunday, October 4. That's a jump from a single weekend-plus-workweek format to a run that spans two full weekends, and the township is describing it as a 10-day event rather than the usual six. Nobody has announced why the window nearly doubled, but the practical effect is real: this isn't a quick sprint you squeeze into one busy week anymore. It's closer to a two-week stretch where you can actually plan around soccer practice, a work trip, or a weekend away and still catch most of it.
The Rule Buried in the Registration Form
Here's the part that changes how you should think about the whole event. Restaurant owners signing up for Hillsborough Restaurant Week are told directly that a discount is not required. The instructions ask them to highlight "a unique dish, service, experience, or anything special that showcases your business," and a prix fixe menu is just one option on a list that also includes tasting menus, special menu items, and complimentary extras.
That means Restaurant Week in Hillsborough was never really built as a coupon event. It's a showcase format, and every participating restaurant gets to decide what showing off looks like. Some will cut prices. Others will put a dish on the menu you can't order the rest of the year. A few will just use the week to get first-time diners through the door with nothing more than word of mouth and a listing on the township's site.
If you go in expecting a discount at every stop, you'll be disappointed at some of them. If you go in treating it as a low-stakes reason to finally sit down somewhere new, the format makes a lot more sense.
The Restaurants Most Residents Still Haven't Tried
That distinction matters this year specifically because Hillsborough's restaurant scene has added a few genuinely different spots in the last two years, and Restaurant Week is the easiest excuse to try them without committing to a full-price night out on an unknown.
Mishta, at 220 Triangle Road, opened in October 2024 as what its owner calls the only farm-to-table Indian restaurant in New Jersey. Chef Parthiv Buch, a Hillsborough local who left a 15-year pharmaceutical career to open it, sources organic chicken, grass-fed lamb and goat, and wild-caught seafood, and told a reporter last year that he works directly with five different Hillsborough farms rather than going through a distributor. Reviews describe a dining room that fills to capacity on reservation-only nights, and diners have driven in from Princeton, Livingston, and even Brooklyn. If you haven't been, Restaurant Week removes the excuse.
Kaisa Market has also opened recently, combining a full Asian grocery, a butcher counter for meat and fish, and a restaurant under one roof, alongside Korean cosmetics and skin care on the retail side. And Andaaz, opened by Manan and Charu Saxena, has been adding to the township's Indian food options at the same time Mishta and the aborted Sigri Indian BBQ project were making headlines.
That last one is worth a note of its own. Sigri Indian BBQ, a North Indian barbecue franchise, signed an agreement to open in Hillsborough in late 2025 and got local press for it. By June 2026, the company had redirected that location to Somerset instead, at 1135 Easton Avenue. If you were waiting for Sigri to show up on a Hillsborough Restaurant Week list this year, it won't be there, and that's not a gap in the coverage. It's a plan that changed.
The Places That Have Been Doing This for Years
Restaurant Week isn't only a launchpad for new spots. It's also where the town's steady performers show up year after year, and they're worth remembering alongside the newer names. Rizes Greek Taverna and Thai Chili House both carry strong ratings on review sites and tend to draw repeat visits from the same regulars. Lenny's Pizza and Pasta has built a reputation on a solid crust and straightforward Italian classics. PJ's Pancake House & Tavern expanded into Somerset County recently, giving the breakfast and brunch crowd another sit-down option beyond the diners already on Route 206. And The Restaurant at Royce Brook Golf Club continues to be a go-to for anyone hosting a small celebration, based on the volume of wedding and event mentions in local reviews.
Past editions have also mixed in popular restaurant chains alongside the independents, which tells you something about how the HBA designed the event: it's meant to promote every restaurant doing business in Hillsborough, not just the ones with a story behind the counter.
When last year's Restaurant Week opened, Mayor John Ciccarelli called it "one of Hillsborough Township's highly anticipated and well-received community events." Whether or not that description holds for this year's longer version, the growth in restaurant count, 33 in 2024 to 42 in 2025, suggests the township's dining scene has more entrants than it did even three years ago, and a two-week format gives all of them more room to be noticed.
Planning Around Eleven Days Instead of Six
The full list of participating restaurants for 2026 wasn't finalized as of this writing. Registration through the Hillsborough Business Association stayed open through September 11, which means the roster will likely keep growing right up until the event starts on September 24. If you check the township's restaurant week page now, expect it to look thinner than it will by the final week of September.
What you can do now is decide where you actually want to spend those eleven days. If you've been meaning to try Mishta, book ahead, since it's reservation-only and fills up. If you haven't been inside Kaisa Market, Restaurant Week gives you a reason to combine a grocery run with a meal. And if you're the type who returns to the same three restaurants every year out of habit, this is the one stretch of the calendar built specifically to get you to skip that habit for a night.
Restaurant Week was never really about the discount. It's about the excuse. This year you just have twice as many days to use it.
Curious what else has changed in Hillsborough this season, from new construction to what a home in this market actually sells for? Karen Boose - Coldwell Banker Realty keeps a close eye on the town beyond the dinner table. Let's Connect.
