Providence Restaurant Weeks are under way through July 23. More than 100 participating restaurants -- most, but not all, in Providence -- are offering a fixed price menu of three courses at lunch for $12.95 and dinner at $29.95. At many, this is a bargain. At lower-priced restaurants it wouldn't be, so they're offering specials at those prices for two people.

You'll find some restaurants participating only on certain days, some offering the special menu only at lunch or at night, so read the menus carefully. Three courses are appetizer, salad and entree at some, appetizer, entree and dessert at others.

Last night, the last of my vacation, we looked into it. There's no search for this part of The Providence Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau site, and it took a long time to open each menu from the sidebar list of restaurants. I was cranky from the heat and getting hungry, so I suffered it, but this morning I made some custom Google searches to help you find what you might be looking for there.

This will find restaurants Participating in 2 for 1 specials. The page titles are all the same, but look at the very end of the links in green to see which restaurant the results refers to. Clicking the title will take you to the full menu:

Maybe you want a specific dish or cuisine -- filet mignon or Arctic char or Italian. This sample link will search for "lobster." To search for a different dish, use the lobster search link below and, when you get the results, change that word in the Google search field from lobster to whatever you want to see. This lets you filter your results many ways.

Search for lobster at participating restaurants:

Again, you'll see the name of the restaurant at the end of the URL in green.

It's just a hack, but it beats clicking every restaurant when you're hungry. The site shouldn't be so clunky.

The outcome: After all that clicking, we finally decided to take a ride. We went to Evelyn's on the Tiverton waterfront and sat in the air-conditioning, mosquito-free, munching scallops and lobster (with a coupon for three free clamcakes through July 15) and watched the sun set over Nannaquaket Pond.)