Spokane Restaurant Week starts this Friday throughout the Inland Northwest.

“Restaurant Week is your opportunity to try as many restaurants as your schedule will allow for affordable, fixed prices,” the week-long event's website says.

Most restaurants are offering a few options for each course for a fixed price of either $18 or $28 a person.

Don't let the sleek interior, TVs everywhere the eye could scan and uniformed wait staff fool you, Poole's Public House on East Hastings Road is no chain restaurant.

Quite the contrary, the eatery defines family-owned as Scott and Lisa Poole team with lifelong friends Skip and Kim Templeton to open the “neighborhood UK-themed sports bar.”

“We have a different take on bar food,” Scott Poole said. “There will be no pre-packaged deep-fried stuff ever served at my place.”

The Pooles are both from North Spokane, and were dreaming of opening their own restaurant for about 10 years. Scott had been actively searching for a space to lease for eight months before he found the location at 101 E. Hastings Rd.

“It's nice to be back on the North Side,” Scott said.

The restaurant has a 120-inch HD TV that will show “all the big games” – especially if a local team is involved.

A new European-style bakery at North Wall Street and West Nebraska Avenue is open and ready to feed the neighborhood.

Morning Sun Bakery (5602 N. Wall St.) offers a variety of pastries, coffee and espresso products. The eatery has a lot of sitting area inside, and when the warm sun returns, will have a full patio-area.

Owner and baker Lisa Taylor says her specialty is cinnamon buns, which can be made with cream cheese, caramel pecan or glaze.

Taylor said she chose the location because she and her husband lives six blocks away and loves the area.

“There aren't a lot of this kind of stuff up here in the north,” she said. “They have bakeries like this on the South Hill and I thought it was time to bring this to our neighborhood.”

Taylor estimated that she gets a few dozen customers a day, and is hoping that as the business becomes more successful she can expand to offering “lunch stuff” with sandwiches and salads.