So did all my friends and followers read about Eight at Eight last week? In case you didn’t, here’s a brief recap: it’s a pretty expensive, but very cool dinner club for singles. Four guys and four girls who never met before dine together and see what happens. Well, if you like to eat, but you don’t feel like paying an arm and a leg to get “set up” on a group date, I’ve got something for you! www.grubwithus.com
What’s Grub With Us? So did you ever watch Check Please on PBS? You know, the show where someone picks a restaurant and a bunch of people go check it out? That’s the basic premise of Grub With Us. Grub is great! I’m a big fan. Grub just celebrated its one year anniversary a few months ago. It started right here in Chicago and it’s branched out to several other big cities since because it’s so awesome.
How does it work? It’s FREE to join! Just create an account for yourself and get ready to get your food on. The website shows what dinners are coming up- and there’s a dinner almost every night. Most of them are on the north side, but not all. And most are on week nights as well. Some dinners have themes (like vegetarians or techies), but anyone is welcome to go. Each dinner shows the menu for the evening (which are served family style) and who you’ll be dining with- so you can skip it if there aren’t any hotties going! It usually ends up being about eight guests. You pay for your dinner in advance on Paypal- they’re usually about $30.
So how is it? I’ve been to about 14 of these in the past year! It’s kind of cool because the type of people who go are very friendly and outgoing. Yes, as usual, it’s frequently single, urban dwelling, white women in their 20′s and 30′s- and I’ve made some nice new girlfriends through it. But I’ve seen gay, straight, married, single, all ages, races, and even some suburbanites. It’s kind of cool because once you start going frequentl,y about half your dining friends are new and the other half you’ve dined with before. I have a handsome, wonderful man who is intelligent, friendly, and does volunteer work that I’ve dined with about 9 times now! We get along famously- he’s my best Grub friend. I thought he might ask me out at some point, but I’m still waiting. I might wait for a long time since I’m not sure I’m his type…. (you feel me? Read between the lines ladies.) Either way, he’s good company just like everyone else I’ve met though Grub. And we dine at some great places: Ethiopian, Peruvian, Chinese, French, American, and everything in between. There are restaurants I’ve always wanted to try and some I’ve never heard of, but love. You can even suggest your favorite restaurant!
Tell me more! So I went to a brunch earlier this week at Hashbrowns. I even brought one of my friends from work! Inevitably, after a string of awesome Grubs this one was only ok. Hashbrowns is a cute, tasty brunch place by UIC. We ate soooo many different kinds of hashbrowns, eggs, fries, toast, fruit, waffles and French toast! To be honest, I really love the brunch meals, I think it’s often the best food, and it’s a nice low key thing to do on a Sunday, but I find that the people I enjoy the most tend to eat on the weeknights or the occasional Friday/Saturday Grubs. The cool kids go out at night. The nice (but less cool) and older crowd do brunch. But I’ve never had a bad meal or completely bad company! 
Grub with us gets: 4.5/5 stars! It’s a cheap, tasty, low-pressure fun way to meet new people! Do this.
So Guinea Pig, what happened to those boys that asked for your number last weekend? This can’t very well be a good dating sight if I talk about what happens at an event and never let you know what happened AFTERWARD! Well, Greek boy didn’t call. And Wisconsin guy sent me an email saying how happy he was to meet me and how he hopes to see me again! oooooh. Promising! Right? Well, I emailed him back and have yet to receive a response. Oh well! No great loss. I still felt like a rock star last week when both boys asked for my number- it didn’t really matter what happened after that as far as I was concerned- I was a true playa’ for one hot minute!
Well, stay tuned next week- Hostess (Saya Hillman of www.macncheeseproductions.com ) will be having another fun event! No, it’s not a Mingler, I already reviewed that, it’s something else fun! Tell you all about it next Sunday!
