Chicago Restaurant Week ended yesterday, although I hear that many of the restaurants extend their special menus for an extra few days. I took advantage of the special $22, three-course Restaurant Week lunch menus to return to two of my favorite restaurants in the city: Naha and Blackbird.

Naha is one of the most reliably excellent restaurants in the city. It offers lovely Mediterranean food in a elegant room with low-key yet professional service. Naha is not trendy or cutting edge; it is just sophisticated and consistently excellent. I used to go to Naha back when I was a young married person and my parents would come to visit and offer to take us out somewhere nice. (The late lamented Crofton on Wells was another such place.)  I hadn’t been back in years, so I was excited to return for Naha’s Restaurant Week menu, which is among the best in the city.

Unlike many restaurants, Naha offered several options for each course on its Restaurant Week menu. That welcoming gesture prevents Restaurant Week patrons from feeling like second-class citizens. It also ensures that vegetarians — like my companion for lunch — and others with limited diets are comfortable.

The spirit with which a restaurant approaches Restaurant Week — are they happy to get new faces in the door at a slow time of year or begrudgingly throwing crumbs to cheapskates? — matters to me. While I can afford to dine at these restaurants — not too often — at other times of year, for some, Restaurant Week is their only chance. At both Naha and Blackbird, I sat next to young couples — I mean college-age young — who were clearly taking advantage of the special menus to sample some of the city’s high-end dining that would otherwise be out of their reach. I admired those kids for being so enterprising and I hope that the restaurants did as well.

For my lunch at Naha, I started with the Armenian flatbread lamb pizza because Phil Vettel (Tribune restaurant critic) recommended it. I was concerned that it would be too much for an appetizer…at lunch, but the flatbread itself was very thin and the lamb finely minced, so it did not weigh me down. Indeed with a tangy yogurt topping and an herb salad on the side, the lamb pizza was much more refreshing than the name suggests. My friend Chris, who joined me, had the woodland mushroom soup with garlic custard and chick pea croutons. It was incredibly rich and satisfying for a vegetarian soup and I almost wished I had gotten it myself.

For the main course, Chris (who sometimes eats fish, okay?) and I both had the Atlantic cod with beluga lentils and celery root remoulade. What a phenomenal dish! The cod was incredibly buttery and — although I sound like a judge on “Top Chef” when I say it — cooked perfectly. Chris and I debated the ingredients in the celery root remoulade, which was wonderful tangy and creamy — turns out the secret ingredient was creme fraiche. I would happily order this dish again and am already wondering when I can do so.

For dessert, I had the almond financier with preserved blueberries — a good option for someone who doesn’t like their desserts too sweet, although that does not describe me especially. Chris did better with the dark chocolate cheesecake with caramel and orange. All in all, it was a lovely meal. Two sodas and one coffee added quite a bit ($13.50) to the total bill, but it was still a great value for such outstanding cuisine. And the service was as polished and professional as you would expect from a restaurant of this caliber.

Blackbird is one of the hardest tables to get during Restaurant Week as savvy diners jump at the chance to eat at this nationally-known, Michelin-starred restaurant for under $25 a person. I nabbed one of the last available tables — at 11:30 am on the second-to-last day of Restaurant Week — weeks in advance. I had dined at Blackbird some years ago, but, as with Naha, had not returned in a while. So I was really looking forward to lunch both for the food and because one of my besties was joining me.

You either love or hate Blackbird’s strikingly modern, all-white decor. I don’t love it myself, but I admire the restaurant for having such a distinctive look. What I do love about Blackbird is the inventive, modern cuisine and the exceptional service. Blackbird’s Restaurant Week menu only offers two or three selections per course, but all the items are taken from the regular menu — they don’t dumb it down for Restaurant Week, which I like.

To start, I chose the steak tartare with rye berries, radishes, oxalis and lemon, while Rowena had the carrot soup with orange ricotta, red pear, crispy potato and vinegar. Once again, I wondered if I picked the wrong thing. I adore steak tartare but in this case, the steak was minced so finely that I didn’t get that velvety texture I expect and while I liked the spicy radishes, I was expecting more of a umami bomb from the meat.

Fortunately, the next two courses did not disappoint. The wood-grilled sturgeon was perfectly melt-in-your-mouth tender with just a hint of smokiness. The mushrooms added earthiness while the grapefruit was sweet and sharp. It’s an exceptional dish and it’s still on the menu.

But the most satisfying dish I had during all of Restaurant Week had to be the over-the-top dessert at Blackbird: salted caramel ice cream studded with bites of fudgy brownie and crunchy candied almonds topped with fudge sauce and whipped creme fraiche. Rowena and I were pretty much in heaven over the decadent combination of sweet and salty, hot and cold, chewy and crunchy. In the case of this dish, while the concept was not ground-breaking, the execution was outstanding.

Farewell until next year Restaurant Week! I am already resolving to indulge in more than three $22 lunches in 2015.