The past couple of weeks in my town, my group of friends and I have been taking advantage of a lot of new restaurant grand openings on the streets surrounding our campus. I'm sure that most of us would rather save our money and eat at home more often, but when you're stuck on campus for anywhere between eight and ten hours every day of the week, you've got to sacrifice the money for the convenience of a quick quality meal close to class and the library. It's been a lot easier lately with all of these grand openings, because the restaurants are having a lot of specials that allow students and others in the area to test out the new restaurant's fare while still helping to build a customer base by getting people in the door. One place in particular really had the right idea, as I found out a few nights back. As I was walking to my car after class last week with a group of fellow students, I noticed some hustle and bustle going on in a new restaurant that we've all been anticipating to open. We saw that the restaurant appeared to be training their new staff of cooks and waiters and had placed a preliminary menu for lunch and dinner on the glass doors so that people could see what they were going to offer. We stopped for a moment to take a look and satisfy our curiosity when the door suddenly opened and people greeted all of us and handed us bags containing full meals that they were practicing making...two of them for each of us! We were all very pleasantly surprised and really excited to be able to try out the food from this new restaurant for free even a week before their great opening. When I got home, I eagerly opened the bag to see what I had been provided. I tried a little bit of each of the two dishes and even shared a bit with my roommate so that he could get a taste of the new restaurant as well. One of my other friends who had received free dinner that night as well and I were on our way over to the restaurant strip today for lunch and we had discussed maybe stopping by and grabbing lunch at the same restaurant. Well, apparently their "advertising" technique of handing out free meals, along with the excitement of just being a new quality restaurant in a small town really caught on, because when we walked by, the line to get in and get a table was out of the door and around the corner. We quickly decided that we should probably wait till a later date to actually sit down and enjoy some food of our choosing, since we weren't really sure how long it would take to even get a table, and of course we didn't know what a typical time span to be served would be with a new group of chefs and wait staff. Hopefully, by the time that we all get a chance to enjoy a lunch or dinner at this new restaurant, it will be time to enjoy the grand opening of another new hip-looking restaurant that will be opening across the street. We all discovered this new place, which is located downstairs from our most typical and well-liked lunch spot. It looks like it will be a fun place to eat lunch, but I don't know if it's really much of a dinner spot. As if all this new restaurant business wasn't enough to make our mouths water, we learned that a lot of the other restaurants on the strip are really stepping up their offerings (at least for lunch) in order to compete with the new hulabaloo. I'm particularly excited about gladly spending some future lunches at my favorite Indian restaurant in town that now offers an eight dollar, all you can eat lunch buffet from Monday to Friday. Indian food is definitely my favorite ethnic cuisine, so as you can imagine, I'm really excited about this new buffet. Wow...now I think I'm getting a little bit hungry for dinner. Maybe it's time to take a short walk over to the strip from my office and see what kinds of great dinner deals and special I can scope out tonight. Bon appetit to you...and to me!!!