Free Food + Free Drinks + Kick Ass Friends = One Hell of a Night

Last Tuesday night we attended another Yelp Elite Event. Yelp.com is a kick ass website that has helped me find restaurants and bars to visit. I'll use them any time I have to do research on various companies in Austin, or if I'm travelling and need to find a restaurant! I eventually started to write reviews on the places that I was visiting and then I became an elite member. Elite members get the opportunity to attend events full of free booze and food. Hells yeah! I apologize because I have stopped writing restaurant/bar reviews on my blog because I have been putting them directly onto Yelp.

The last event was held at Finn and Porter, which is in the Hilton downtown on 4th. The hotel is pretty snazzy and the restaurant is decorated with a modern flair. I was impressed, and I'm glad that we dressed up. Not sure when we'll be back to eat a regular dinner at Finn and Porter, but I'll recommend them to anybody because the food we ate was very nom, nom, nom!

Orly, Sarah and Jim

Jimmy and I... we look so grown up in our big boy and big girl clothes. Please don't notice the 3 glasses of wine that we are holding. Then waiter with the glasses of wine had just walked by so we grabbed a glass and didn't think to put them down before we took the picture.
Jim was being a brat and didn't want to take the picture, so I improvised

Sarah and I


Sarah and Orly

Matt, Anthony, Jim and Orly

Yelp party

Sarah, Dawn, Lindsey and I

Elevator picture

This little appetizer was the best thing ever. Seriously. It had a tiny potato pancake on the bottom, a hunk of beef (perhaps prime rib?), and topped with a Bearnaise sauce. Oh. My. God. I don't even know how many of these I ate... the waiters just kept coming around with full plates for us. It got so bad that one waitress would smile every time she came around because she knew we would take a couple to eat.

This was an interesting tomato soup with a grilled shrimp. The shrimp was cooked perfectly, but a little under seasoned. The soup itself was watery and wasn't something that I cared for. Perhaps it was because I still yearning for another one of those potato and steak bites

They had a self serve display that had several type of one bite appetizers. I believed they had a cherry chutney with ground pecans on a very tiny piece of bread, a lobster salad on a fried pasta sheet and a heirloom tomato, fresh mozzarella and balsamic vinegar on a cracker. Fin and Porter really went out of their way to impress us.. and it worked.

Tough Jim

Makers Mark was one of the vendors at the party, so there was free Makers Mark drinks. I'm not a fan, but I did try their Mark Palmer which is a mix of lemon aid, tea and Makers Mark. I gave it the ol college try, but I still didn't like it. Thankfully the also had free wine!

There was also a sushi counter. Now as I have mentioned, Jim and I are novices when it comes to sushi. We have dabbled here and there but have been pretty tame. This night gave us 3 choices to try and we tried each one, and surprisingly really liked two of them.


Our favorite roll (didn't get a close up picture) was the Fire roll. Here is the description off of their online menu: Shrimp tempura, avocado, topped with spicy assorted fish, tempura flakes, tobiko (flying fish eggs), green onion and spicy mayo. For those of you that don't eat sushi, I'm sure that sounds like a horrible combination, but we really liked it.

The picture below is their Spicy Tuna roll... also very good!

Playing with the mirrors in the parking garage