Restaurant.com, a website that offers discount gift certificates to local restaurants, is having a "sale". Now, you can get a $25 gift certificate for $2 (regularly $10) and a $10 one for $.60. The gift certificates usually require a minimum food purchase of $35 to $50 (for the $25 one), and they attach an 18% tip to the pre-discounted bill. As I usually tip 20%, that doesn't bother me.

The restaurants that offer gift certificates are all over the place in terms of cost and quality. I got a gift certificate for Jordan's at the Claremont (which I may use for my 40th birthday, as that place is expensive), to Kenkoy's (a Filipino restaurant in Hayward), to Shashamane Int'l Bar & Grill (an Ethiopian restaurant in Oakland), to Cocina Poblana in Jack London and to Unicorn Pan-Asian cuisine in Berkeley.

The gift certificates do not expire in California (they expire a year from purchase in other states), so it doesn't matter when we go.

To get the discounted price use the code CELEBRATE