Ms.K’s 1* Michelin Meal @$34

April’s my fav month of the year! Lots of my fav people are born in April and of course, my all-time fav person’s birthday – me!

Birthdays, like any other celebrations (Mother’s Day, Anniversaries, insert any other happy event here), usually involves a bit more pomp than the usual meal out. Our usual take is to always bring that pomp right back home to our made-at-home meals because:

1. We do like cooking
2. We cook pretty well
3. It is much cheaper, and even if it works out quite expensive because we buy good quality ingredients, we still have a heartier meal
4. The kids – they can entertain themselves with their toys and if they are tired, they can just plop ’emselves down on the bed and rest.

But it’s my birthday and I do want a meal out. I have not completely divorced myself from viewing a nice meal out on occasion as a treat. I’m 80% there, the remaining 20% wants that meal out but at a good price.

Enter my awesome birthday lunch experience at Garibaldi, a 1 Michelin Star Restaurant, for $34. For Mr.C and myself! And Coco #2 if you consider the fact that I fed him milk whilst having lunch? Sidenote – usually we don’t care much for the Michelin guide as well. We’ve eaten plenty of yummo meals at non-Michelin star restaurants so we just consider restaurant reviews vs. awards. Case in point, the gnocchi are Garibaldi was mediocre compared to the luscious Gnocchi we had at Tasmania. The only Michelin star restaurant we actually do want to try is Jiro’s @ Tokyo as after watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi, we started dreaming of sushi.

So what was the entire cost of the meal? Unfortunately we threw the receipt away cos we are that good with clutter, haha. The meal cost us $100+ for both of us as we had the executive set lunch. However we ended up paying $34 for it in total, which comes up to $17 per person. The pictures would show it was a pretty decadent meal, especially when it came to the desert.

How? I’ve been pretty ‘ON’ with my Chope game. I recently discovered it and decided I’ll make all reservations there if the restaurant I wanted was on it. For each reservation, I earned 100 points. For sign ups, I got 400 points. At random times, there’s promotions too that see a reservation earning more than 100 points (Easter egg promo codes for example). At 1,000 points, I redeemed the points for $30. It wasn’t hard to get up to 1,000 points if you are in no rush and we certainly were not intentionally eating out to hit 1,000 points. So we had 1,000 points on my account and a 1,000 points on Mr.C’s account. That itself was worth $60 of vouchers that we are free to use at any of the restaurants on Chope, which is quite an extensive list!

That should have been enough already, right? Well I noted that there was Garibaldi vouchers on sale at Chope as well, purchase $50 for $45, essentially at a 10% off. Hmm, why not? Then I got to thinking, why don’t I buy “codes to enjoy $30 off voucher purchases” instead of restaurant vouchers. This way, I can stack the discount i.e. I would buy the $50 voucher for $45 and apply the $30 codes I got for 1,000 points. Effectively getting $50 for $15. We did that twice so now we have $100 vouchers for which we paid $30. The total bill was $104 pre-discounts so after discounts, we paid $34.

And that, my fellow coconuts, is how we enjoyed what we would consider an expensive meal, for a more palatable price tag. Do check out Chope, there’s a referral link but we are not sharing any. Do ask around, you may have friends that would gladly share their referral link which will each both of you some 400 points.

Happy munching!