Sunday, June 12, 2011

Crave Sushi

I had purchased Groupons for Bryce and me to try out Crave Sushi, located in Midtown on Travis St., a while ago. We'd past it quite a few times in the past and put it on our 'restaurants to try out' list. The two times we tried to go they were closed. They have those lunch hours, closed, then dinner hours.

We finally picked a day to go, which was a Wednesday or Thursday night, I believe. We walked into a pretty sparsely-filled restaurant, were asked if we had reservations, no, then told "hmm... it may be awhile..." Really??? She then said we could take up a big table if we wanted. I asked if we could just sit at the sushi bar. She took us over there. The decor is decent.

The service... HORRIFIC! Our waiter didn't smile once, didn't look us in the eyes or even our general direction. I guess since some sports thing was playing on the TV he was more interested in that. We ordered our drinks. I wasn't feeling all too well since my sinuses were going berserk so I ordered hot green tea. For our appetizer we ordered the gyoza. About 5 minutes later the waiter HANDS me the plate so I can set it down. Annoying. It was OK, but it definitely was filled as little as possible.

I really wanted something with hot broth like udon or ramen, buuuut... they didn't have any of that. And their miso soup was served with mushrooms, so I just ordered a salmon temaki and a specialty roll called "pink panther." It actually took me about 5 times of reading the entire menu to settle on that roll because all of them sounded pretty unappetizing and nearly all of them had some kind of mayo on it, which I hate. The "chefs" at the sushi bar not once looked up and asked us if we wanted anything. I had to say "excuse me!" to ask if they had any oh toro. They didn't. That's all of the interaction we had with the chefs. I noticed a huge slab of salmon in front of me that they were cutting off of and it was... I don't know what was wrong with it but it seemed to have a strange white discoloration and film on it. Brother.

Over 30 minutes later Bryce and I got our specialty rolls. I had to be handed the plates and decide where I wanted to place them, again. And I had to hand the waiter our used plate from the gyoza of half an hour prior. I ate a few bites of my roll, but couldn't really take it any more so I just ate the peppered tuna and spicy scallop mix off the top and just ate that and let Bryce had whatever was inside it. All I could say is it was unidentified-looking and tasting. Bryce got the Cheetah roll which had crushed Flaming Hot Cheetohs on it, but he said it was too light, not spicy and not that good. We then got our temaki and unagi. Bryce said the unagi was good. My temaki... bleh. The salmon wasn't that good at all and the nori was soggy to the point that it was chewy!!!!

When we asked for the check, we thought he would eagerly bring it out since he didn't seem to want us there, but no. He forgot so we waited some more.

I'm really not surprised that this restaurant has some pretty poor reviews. I will never go back. The atmosphere is lame. The service is terrible. The menu is sad. The food is crap. I can't understand why lame Midtown yuppies keep that place in business.

One positive, the bus boy/beverage refiller-upper was always on his game and friendly. Maybe the rest of the staff can take notes.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

COUPONISTA!!!!

I have been completely inspired to start using coupons and promo codes! I've never before but a friend from high school recently had been posting her accomplishments of savings. I'm there! She linked me to: Adventures of a Couponista  to get more information. She also suggested coupons.com, target.com's coupons and the Sunday paper's coupons. I'm excited for Sunday! Haha.

There were many coupons for Kate Spade, Sephora, Folica, groceries, etc... I actually got hung up on looking at a lot of jewelery due to a 75% off code at ICE.com . Here are some of those codes.

My first savings was today. Bryce and I have been talking about ordering Papa Johns pizza for the past week, so I decided to look up some promo codes and we saved $10! Yay. :)

I'll keep updating about my couponista adventures! Hehe.

Take care.

PS My tummy has been tainted by bad ground beef from Bryce's spaghetti. :(