If you, like me, have lots of friends but not a lot of space for entertaining, I encourage you to support our local restaurants (and yourself).
My Kits apartment is 550 square feet and to make things worse I always have creative projects on the go. Entertaining more than a couple of people requires a lot of effort to hide the projects and make space for guests.
The answer for a highly-social, community catalyst? Get your group on with a groupon in Kitsilano!
Several Kitsilano restaurants occasionally advertise “taster” menus which make sharing the cost easy, and sharing food is so much nicer than everyone ordering on their own. It also means you can move around and visit with different people without upsetting your servers.
I got started on this because a friend who usually takes me out to a special restaurant for my birthday, bought a groupon for Atithi and said I could invite four friends. As it happens (I’m very gregarious) ten of us came and Atithi were pleased to honour the $20/person price for the extra people. I’ve since “hosted” another event there and am planning a third. Just call or email them and they’ll adjust the menu for you. My friends particularly love the fish dish and when I asked what everyone’s favorite dish was, no one mentioned the chicken and potatoes. So next time I’m going to get an additional vegetable dish.
Although it’s a small restaurant, a lot of their trade is in take-out so we had lots of space to spread out. They even let us have an extra table for a recycled gift exchange. We went on a Sunday night. Other nights might be busier.
I collected the money for the meal which was easy and asked people to leave their own tip based on the regular price of $35. When I asked for individual bills for the drinks people had ordered, the poor server confessed, “I’m sorry I don’t think I know who ordered what.” So people just went up and confessed their sins and paid up. They were so accommodating that when I couldn’t access my groupon number (no wifi and I hadn’t printed it out), they just trusted me to send in the number after I got home.
You can order the groupon for 2, 4 or 6, but the real people at the restaurant are more flexible than the rules mentioned on the Groupon site. Just contact them. They’re your neighbours!
“Atithi” means “Honoured Guest” and we did indeed feel like that.
2445 Burrard Street (604) 731-0221 Atithi.ca, atithi01@yahoo.ca
Last modified: November 18, 2015
