Making reservations and belated post of anniversary dinner

I was flipping through photos on my laptop and stumbled upon the pictures from our second anniversary dinner at my new favourite restaurant, Chambar (562 Beatty Street) back at the end of July. How I forgot to post about such a lovely evening and meal, I don’t know. Especially since we only had to pay for a third(!) of it. It was a really nice night out with my guy.

How so? Well, there is a great site called OpenTable.com where you can make reservations at restaurants all over North America and other parts of the world. (Dinner in Dubai, anyone?). For every reservation that you make and that is attended/confirmed, you get 100 points. Some restaurants have 1000 point times that you can book. As an executive assistant, I book a lot of lunches and dinners, and I’m all about making a reservation for date night or dinner with friends. So you can imagine, my points add up pretty quickly – I’m apparently an OpenTable VIP.

Depending on the amount of points you have, you can redeem for an OpenTable gift certificate that can be used at any OpenTable affiliated restaurant. I redeemed 10,000 of my points for a $120 certificate. Turns out the amounts listed are USD, so when it came in the mail, I had $130 CAD for Sean and I to go out to fancy restaurant. I saved it for our anniversary and we went to Chambar.

Chambar is a Belgian restaurant that is part of the mini gastro empire that includes The Dirty Apron (awesome deli and cooking school) and Medina Cafe (great place for lunch); all are on the same block of Beatty Street and owned by the same people. They are all unpretentious, popular, fun places to eat, but Chambar is my favourite of the trio. It’s a fancy restaurant but not in the way that makes you feel uncomfortable. Lots of exposed beams, reds, blacks, candlelight; great staff and service, and WONDERFUL food and drink. They are also a carbon neutral restaurant. In this day and age, how can you not like that??

It was my second time at Chambar, but Sean’s first and I was so excited for us to have a nice, romantic anniversary meal there. They did not disappoint. (How can you disappoint someone when you bring them a kick-butt Chianti to start the evening off?)

Happy Labour Day long weekend, everyone!