Fake crab, great deal

November 22, 2010 - 4:29 PM by Brian Blum

Great deal, but looks better than it tastes

As Israelity’s David Brinn wrote last week, the new Jerusalem-based group-buying site, appropriately called GroopBuy, is taking the Anglo community by storm. My wife and I signed up for the service nearly as soon as it launched three weeks ago.

Since then, we’ve been receiving an email every day with another “outrageous offer.” We’ve already bought two – a haircut for our daughter at 60% off and NIS 75 ($20) of sushi at the Tsunami restaurant for only NIS 20 ($5.50). For that one, we bought two coupons.

We got a chance to try out the GroopBuy system for a date night dinner last week. I was worried there might be some hidden catch (such as, you have to order from the “special menu”) but there wasn’t. The only fine print was that we had to use our coupon within one month of purchasing – no hording coupons like frequent flyer miles.

We pigged out (pardon the non-kosher expression – the restaurant most definitely is, though the imitation crab meat was nothing like what I remember from sushi back home), and at the end of the meal received a bill for “minus 3 shekels” – that is, we hadn’t reached our NIS 150 limit.

Unfortunately, the food itself wasn’t as spectacular as the savings. I’m a big sushi connoisseur and, other than a few tempura coated maki, Tsunami didn’t come close to our Jerusalem favorite: Sushi Rehavia. That wasn’t GroopBuy’s fault of course.

On the way out, I ran into a work colleague who was celebrating her daughter’s birthday. There were six at her table – and each one had bought the GroopBuy coupon. That meant for NIS 120, they received NIS 450 worth of sushi!

Even I’d put up with the fake crab for a deal like that.

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