I happened upon Restaurant.com as I was browsing the internet just before Christmas. The site offers gift certificates for local restaurants at significantly reduced prices. As my husband and I usually go out to dinner once a week for “date night”, I decided to give it a try. I bought a $25 gift certificate for $10 to a local burger joint (like an Applebees or TGIFridays). In order to use the gift certificate, we were required to spend $35. Our usual bill at this type of restaurant is usually about $35 plus tax and tip; so I figured that this would be a bargain ($10 for the gift certificate and $10 for the difference between the $35 tab and the $25 g.c. plus tax and tip).
It worked out even better than expected. The prices at this restaurant were a bit lower than Applebees so we even bought an order of 10 Buffalo wings to go (which the children enjoyed for lunch the next day in addition to the 1/2 of a hamburger I couldn’t finish and a bit of leftover pasta) to bring our tab up to $35. The service wasn’t quite as fast as Applebees but this actually suited us just fine as the main purpose of our “date night” is to reconnect through uninterrupted conversation; but the food was just as tasty!!!
Note to all my frugal friends: We pay cash from our weekly allowance for our date night dinners. We usually each pull $20ish dollars from our wallets to split the bill – very romantic, isn’t it? But those ugly credit card charges would definitely be very unromantic!!!
