(That's a place that lets you bring your own bottle of wine in to enjoy along with the establishment's purchased food - BYOB stands for bring your own bottle.)
And better yet, how can you find a local BYOB eatery with no corkage fee?
Until recently, I relied completely on word of mouth to find these elusive eateries. But now, we can find the BYOB places nearest us using the handy-dandy restaurant finder, ReserveYourNight.com, brought to us by those nice Australians at Yellow Tail Reserve wine.
Oh, yes. Not only do those kangaroo loving-vintners bring us drinkable wine for a good price, NOW they're teaching us how we can pick up a bottle at our local wine store for the same price as the by-the-glass price at the restaurants…and then tote that bottle with us when we go out to dinner. Genius!
Currently ReserveYourNight gives the run-down on restaurants that allow BYOB in the Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, NYC, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Southeast Florida and Washington,D.C./Baltimore metro areas. (Hopefully they'll expand their database into other regions too!)
So if like me and my husband, you like to have a glass or two of wine when out on a date, but you'd like to save some cash for, I don't know, paying the sitter, preschool tuition, fixing the leaky roof, COLLEGE, I hope you'll agree that this online resource is AWESOME.
You can search the BYOB database here, then go to the right-hand navigation and click your nearby area and then enter your zipcode, proximity to your area, the amount you're willing to spend on corkage fees and other search criteria.
I personally searched for restaurants with no corkage fee. And then I called to verify the places that interested me that BYOB was A-OK with the managers. However, at some places a staff member who answered was not sure about the restaurant policy or their liquor license has changed. So I would call the places you find via search at ReserveYourNight before you BYOB that box of Franzia!
I also found some fabulous-looking restaurants with corkage fees listed at $3, $5 and fancy-schmancy ones with a $10 corkage fee that would be completely worth it (you know, places with by-the-bottle prices of no less than $30).
Happy sipping!
More Savvy Saver Tips from A Parent in Silver Spring
Disclosure: I am no in way affiliated or paid by Yellow Tail or ReserveYourNight.com. I just think this is really cool!!
