Frugal Friday-How I roll

TGIF everyone! I sure am happy it’s Friday, this week has been a killer but thankfully it passed by quickly.

I had to sushi deals this past week. The first one was at Pisces Sushi, you may remember my fantastic experience at Pisces back in November.  When I saw a $20 deal for $40 worth of food at Pisces on Living Social, I scooped it up immediately and was looking forward to my visit.

I got two rolls and my friend got two rolls as well. With these deals, I don’t mind shelling out the money I would normally spend on myself so I can dine with a friend. One of my friends usually buys Groupon and Living Social deals as well so one of us will bring the deal we have and the other will pick up the difference and so on and so on.

I can’t remember the names of either roll but they weren’t as good as I remembered Pisces being. The fish didn’t taste fresh and had a rubbery texture-two things I do not want when I’m eating sushi. Plus the service was absolutely horrible-I waitressed for six years so I have a huge tolerance with servers because I know how it eels to be busy and be in the weeds but we ordered drinks and waited for about 10 minutes. All of us were looking around, waiting for our server to come back who had a new hire shadowing him. it felt like forever for the food to come out and when it didn’t, it started arriving at different times-not cool. So one person ordered a hot entrée then five minutes later, someone would get their sushi then someone else would get their sushi five minutes later and you get the picture. It was horrible and by the time we got out of there, I just wanted to get out of Pisces.

While hungover on Saturday, I was reading about Akahana, a new sushi restaurant in Charlotte’s Creative Loafing. I am always down for trying a new sushi place but the thing that caught my eye about Akahana was that they offer Buy one, get one free sushi rolls on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Can we say hell to the yeah!?

Sweet Romeo roll on the left, Furious Dragon roll on the right. The creative, funky names just added to the excellence that was Akahana sushi. The sushi was fresh and popping with flavor and was a complete 180 from the sushi at Pisces.

Naturally, the first thing I do when trying out a new place is check out the reviews on Yelp and when I checked it out for Akahana, many people mentioned how bad the service was. I wanted to be the one who proved them wrong, the one to show everyone that Akahana would be my new, wonderful go to spot with terrific service but I’m sad to report I’m not that person. I don’t know if it was because they are new and are drawing in quite a crowd on Thursday nights and the servers are overwhelmed but the service was almost non-existent. We practically had to flag down our waitress to give her our order, get refills, etc. and I contemplated throwing a chopstick at our server to get her attention but with my luck, that would either a) turn into a lawsuit or b) get violently ill from sushi gone wrong. On the flip side, $17 for two rolls, a salad and a beer is A-Ok in my world.

Also, speaking of how I roll, check out my new magnet!

Neyal sent me this magnet the other week and I absolutely love it!

I checked out Ulta since I had a $3.50 off of $10 purchase. I prefer Ulta to Sephora because it’s cheaper plus they send you coupons, you can use manufacturer coupons there and earn points for every dollar you spend!

I got a bottle of Neutrogena Micro-Mist sunless tanner and a compact brush for $9

The brush is awesome and just what I need to carry out in my purse. I will leave my brush and god knows what else in there and then bam-random pieces of paper and Splenda packets get stuck in the bristles.

I also found some new flips for the warm weather that’s coming soon. I wish I could wear my flips every day because they are so comfortable and Reefs are my preferred brand. I checked out a local surf shop and saw that they had a big selection of their Reefs on sale for 30% off

I thought these would be $30 a piece but they ended up $15 each so kind of BOGO.

Something else, that I found this week was Starbucks Pick of The Week iTunes cards. Starbucks offers these for free and all you do is go to iTunes, punch in the code on the back of the card and then you have a new song in your library. It’s a great way to discover new artists and  jam for free!

I’m gonna head out–I have a bunch of Netflix to catch up on (last season of Gilmore Girls-sadface) and generally relax. Lincoln and I are bundled up under the covers so I can save a little money on the gas bill this month.

Both of us are over this $70 gas bill that we’ve had the past few months.

Heels or flip-flops? 

Any good finds this week?

Are you tolerant with bad service in restaurants?

Happy savings!