America's Favorite Restaurants: What's your local fave?

By Budget Travel
October 3, 2012
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Courtesy <a href="http://mybt.budgettravel.com/_Heavenly-meatloaf/photo/9912756/21864.html">joe8211943/myBudgetTravel</a>

For our October issue, we will be running our first Readers' Choice issue. Every page will be built around results of your votes on BudgetTravel.com.

One topic on our minds right now is restaurants. We'll put together your suggestions to get America's Favorite Restaurants: Where to eat like a local, from sea to shining sea.

Here's your chance: What local restaurant would you add to our list?

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Inspiration

San Francisco: 5 places to eat for free

Ok, we're not trying to disprove the "there's no such thing as a free lunch" mantra. But at some of San Francisco's bars and restaurants, you can eat for semi-free&mdash;just stop by during one of these five free-food happy hours. A glass of wine or a beer (usually at special prices) will get you access to a spread of snacks, ranging from hearty Italian dishes to Asian-fusion finger food. Russian Hill eatery Amarena lays out a huge Italian antipasti buffet on Thursdays, featuring different pasta dishes like pesto lasagna, plus onion focaccia bread, salad, and more. Expect a warm welcome from owner Paolo and lots of families at this neighborhood favorite&mdash;try one of the Italian or California wines from their superb wine list, and then fill up your plate. 2162 Larkin Street, 415/447-0441, every other Thursday 6:00&ndash;9:00 p.m. Call ahead to double check dates. Namu in Inner Richmond offers up free food on Monday nights. This happening scene draws major crowds with buffets of Asian-inspired food, a DJ spinning background music, and family-style seating. The menu features seasonal, local ingredients that change daily&mdash;a recent Monday-night spread included chicken tempura, house-made beef jerky, fried pork belly, and rice with pork, seaweed, and fish eggs. Belly up to the bar and order one of 30 sakes and wines by the glass to take care of the one-drink minimum. 439 Balboa Street, 415/386-8332, Mondays 9:30 p.m.&ndash;midnight. As long as you order two drinks per table, the servers at North Beach's Palio D'Asti will bring you a free pizza on weeknights before 7 p.m. Even pizza purists can appreciate gourmet toppings like Berkshire pork and fennel sausage, fire-roasted peppers, arugula, or asiago cheese. Try a Prosecco or a Napa Valley wine from the extensive wine list. 640 Sacramento Street, 415/395-9800, Monday&ndash;Friday 4&ndash;7 p.m. Rollicking Friday nights at Mission dive bar El Rio start off with free oysters at 5 p.m., followed by a barbecue. Try bacon-wrapped hot dogs (a favorite food in the Mission) or grilled chicken, with sides like homemade potato salad and fresh spinach salad. Friday is also Red Hot Burlesque Night, so expect scantily clad ladies in corsets and fishnets mingling in with the crowd. 3158 Mission Street, 415/282-3325, Fridays beginning at 5:30 p.m. Sugar Lounge, a small, swanky spot in Hayes Valley, serves a smorgasbord of snacks for free on weekdays, such as lumpia, veggies with dip, teriyaki chicken, shrimp tempura, fried sweet potatoes, and eggrolls. Get there early&mdash;Sugar Lounge tends to fill up with a hip, very young crowd as eager to drink pink cocktails as munch on the free food. 377 Hayes St., 415/255-7144, Monday&ndash;Friday 4:30-7 p.m. Want more? I attempted to eat for free for two weeks&mdash;read about it here.

Inspiration

Reader report: Booking New Zealand hotels with Wotif and NeedItNow

One of our most loyal commenters on the blog is Iolaire McFadden. In late May, he and his wife Susan flew to Auckland, nabbing a $399 round trip flight to Auckland out of LAX. Iolaire has kindly shared some tips with us about planning the trip: Normally our lead time on good deals is about six months, so this was extremely last minute for us, booking only a couple of weeks in advance.We found that hotels in NZ are relatively expensive versus our recent trips to Portugal and Argentina. These days we usually find smaller, business-type hotels or limited service hotels on Booking.com. For that reason I started looking for a Priceline equivalent in NZ. On some random FlyerTalk post I found mention of Wotif and one other site. We started looking at Wotif and generally were happy with their selection and quoted rates versus say Kayak or Booking.com. It seemed to be NZ oriented, because it differentiated between Auckland CBD along with about 10 other Auckland suburbs, and it offers many types of accommodations, camper parks, hostels, hotels, apartments. The choice in accommodations was very helpful as we tried to decide between a camper van or a car. We choose the car due to the challenges driving over there&hellip;. One attractive thing with Wotif is they have all sorts of promotions tied with low prices. For example free internet, meals, wine etc. Most of those promotions require a two night stay. They also allow you to filter a lot of hotels easily, I.e. 3 star and up Hotels, whose max rate is under $100 USD, then just hover over the price matrix to see the special deals. For Auckland we choose a Black Label (opaque: you don't know the name until your credit card is accepted) hotel for $1 NZ more than a comparable hotel with the same rating and relatively same features. We were attracted to the black label hotel because it had a Sauna and it hyped up the soft pillows and bed which made it sound like a decent hotel. As soon as we paid we found it was the Rendezvous Hotel Auckland. Looking at the map it seemed like that was near the edge of the CBD, and few blocks out from the other choices we looked at. However in the end this was our best hotel on the trip for $139.93 USD for both nights&mdash;and that included checking in at around 8 a.m. no questions asked, what seemed like decent room on the 9th floor, etc. Our second hotel was the Ibis Rotorua, we booked it on NeedItNow since that had a prepay option that was much cheaper than Wotif, also looking at my notes Booking.com had had the same prepaid price. That hotel was not quite as nice, and we got a lower quality room that reflected the price we paid for $82 for two nights. Our third hotel was at the Bella Vista Napier, a smaller motel booked via Wotif. At that locations the hotels seemed fairly high priced, with lots of motels. The deciding factor here was the promotions offered via Wotif, free continental breakfast. This ended up being toast, butter, and jelly that you cook yourself in your room. But again it was appreciated given other hotels did not seem to offer that option. Our final night we did a walk up purchase at the historic 1890's Rob Roy Hotel in Waihi. The odd thing there is that it is in above a pub and casino that is basically closed down as of 4 PM and the doors are locked at 7 PM, negating my concerns about being housed above a pub. NZ hotels ended up being very accommodating, the staff are friendly, all hotels have LOTS of tea bags and instant coffee along with a electric kettle, even the higher end Rendezvous Hotel Auckland. This was quite different from our stay last year in the Vancouver Hyatt which now features a single serve coffee maker with ONE complementary cup of coffee, and "self check-in kiosks." Talk about unfriendly stays. (Do a search for "Hyatt single serve coffee" and you will see how this is now one of their key "Features &amp; Services" across the country.) MORE Just Back From&hellip; a Solo Trip to New Zealand Scouting Report 2010: Havelock, New Zealand 39 Affordable Hotel Chains Only Locals Know Real Deals: Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific

Inspiration

Readers' best California photos

We went looking for your best photos of California, one of the most geographically diverse states in the nation. Our 22 picks include hills covered in poppies in Three Rivers, ships battling in San Diego, a ghost town in Bodie, and fog rolling in over L.A. Launch the slide show. MORE READER SLIDE SHOWS Portraits | Wildlife | Hawaii STILL IN SEARCH OF... Last Call! Share your bridges photos for consideration in our upcoming slide show. Upload the photos through myBudgetTravel and tag them "bridges."

Inspiration

London: Seeing stars

There's a new attraction on the block to satisfy new-millennium-Britain's celebrity cravings: the Hollywood-style bus tour. Four times daily, minibuses leave from near Madame Tussauds celebrity waxwork museum in Baker Street, central London to offer four kinds of tour: of celeb homes, film locations, famous musical spots and places associated with pop culture. Homes visited include houses lived in by Madonna, Winston Churchill, Princess Diana, Jimi Hendrix, Oscar Wilde, and Jim Morrison. The film and music locations include places from the Harry Potter movies, the Hugh Grant film, Notting Hill, various James Bond locations and former haunts of the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and the Clash. The pop culture bus stops at everything from the Ritz Hotel to Abbey Road and the former home of Wallis Simpson&mdash;the American who married British king, Edward VIII, forcing him to abdicate the throne. Trips take 90 minutes, cost $38. thecelebrityplanet.com. MORE Budget Travel's London coverage