Ordering cheap at a fancy restaurant

I'm in St. Petersburg, Florida this week for a journalism conference on blogging. I'm learning during the day and blogging at night, except when the Internet connection dies so I plan to wake up at dawn to blog, though that would require my alarm to go off, which it does not this morning and since I'm opposed to skipping breakfast posts will be a bit light today, folks. But I digress.

Last night a few of us went out for dinner after a day of talking about the importance of linking and finding your blogging voice. We were looking for a casual restaurant but the cheaper places seemed too empty to try, so we walked into a swanky Italian place called Bella Brava.

We got a booth in front of the brick oven and settled into our menus. Meat dishes were in the 20s and pastas were in the high teens, oh my! I had decided to splurge for the $16 linguine with vegetables-but-no-meat dish when I spotted my savior. The burger.

It's hip to have a burger on the menu at upscale places. You will find it is often over-priced ($11 in this case), but still cheaper than the other dinner options (at least at Bella Brava). The fancy-restaurant-burger usually comes with a fancy cheese (fontina in this case), fancy bread (whole wheat) and yummy fries (shoe string with lots of salt).

So remember to check for the burger option if you are at a fancy restaurant and want to save a buck!