Click on the image to go to our Google map that locates every restaurant participating in DC's Winter Restaurant Week 2010.

Last week, we gave you the heads up as soon as Washington’s Winter Restaurant Week listings went up.  The announcement caught us off-guard…the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington did a nice job keeping the dates of this year’s event under wraps until they were ready to let everyone know.

We took advantage of some unexpected downtime during Saturday’s Snowpocalypse to do our usual trick of putting all of the participating restaurants onto a Google map.  You can use it to see if your favorites are participating, or check out a neighborhood and see how many Restaurant Week deals you can score in a six block radius.  It’s yours to do with as you please.

As you look at the map, you’ll notice that there are some real treats participating.  Of course, some continue to confound us with their Lunch Only participation – it’s just SO hard to get away for a decent three-course lunch when your full-time job expects you to be working.  Even so, we’ve seen a few newcomers and some old favorites on the list that are going to make this another good time for DC diners.

These days, you’ve got plenty of us food bloggers working to gather the participating restaurants’ menus.  DC Foodies are the originals when it comes to this, but you’ll probably see some reporting from Brightest Young Things and Dining in DC among others.  We’ll stick to the map-making.

Check back as Restaurant Week approaches early next year – while some of the menus are already getting out, most won’t be finalized until the week or so beforehand.  But don’t wait to book your reservations; you’re going to have to gamble if you want to score a reservation at any of the more sought-after participants.

We’ve already given you some tips to make your choices, and we definitely encourage you to make use of OpenTable (hence the links on our map) for reservations and UrbanSpoon for aggregated reviews.  We’ve already got a couple of blue chip reservations locked in.