Hello from the SFO Polaris lounge! I’m flying to Japan in ANA First Class tonight thanks to wide-open award space that happened earlier this year. At SFO, the lounges all close by 10 pm (Centurion at 9 pm, KLM at 7:45 pm), but the flight is at 1:45 am, so ANA issues $30 meal vouchers per passenger in the form of a Mastercard Gift Card. Terms state the merchant must be categorized as “food, dining, or restaurant.” It’s the same GC that United, Alaska, and Delta issue (though I hear they are sometimes Discover cards), with the same zip code of 60173. You receive a QR code and the card number, expiration date, CVV, and billing zip code. From some internet sleuthing, I found the entire billing address: 1475 E Woodfield Rd, Schaumburg, IL 60173.
Categorydining
We booked a late lunch for 3pm, but as the Conrad is 1 hour ahead of normal Maldivian time, this was more like 2pm in our time. After two early morning dives, our yacht headed towards the Conrad, where we took a speedboat and got off on the Conrad’s jetty. We were welcomed by a host, who provided us with cool moistened towels, then another member of the staff who offered a welcome fruit drink, before we were ushered towards the restaurant. The host warned that because of the size of our party, it might get a little hot inside, so they had preemptively set up a number of fans.
The first floor of the restaurant was a nice lobby with couches, a table, restrooms, and a small prep kitchen. The main kitchen was at the outdoor restaurant back across the walkway. It was quite nice and comfortable up here, and I frequently came back to hang out to escape the heat during our meal.
We took the staircase down to the dining area, and WOW, what an amazing sight. We were seated promptly and offered a cold towel. I wish they didn’t take away our towel so quickly though!
The menu for lunch was a 4 course tasting menu, with the option to upgrade the main from a sous vide chicken to a Maldivian reef lobster. I took the lobster upgrade. We were given the wine list and wow, everything was super expensive. We ended up with 3 bottles of white, a Riesling, a Chardonnay, and a Chablis for our party of 15.
Overall, all the courses were very tasty and presented very well. Service was very attentive. It was awesome to see fish swimming right over you while eating. The only downside was that as warned, the restaurant started to get extremely hot during the meal, to the point that the butter completely melted! I can’t imagine how hot it would be during noon time! I frequently would go hang out at the upstairs lounge between courses, and people took to sitting directly on top of the air conditioning vents while not eating. Our negotiated price to book out the entire restaurant at $344 a head plus service charge, not including drinks. So while very tasting, as compared to several other fine dining options that I’ve been to, you are definitely paying for the view and less so the food.
After the meal concluded, we were lead back to the reception to pay for the bill, which will tie into my next post.
The pictures of the meal follow:
First, sign up for the program by going to https://www.yelp.com/cashback
Next, link up a credit card. It says the cashback program is powered by Empyr, and not Rewards Network which is used by the various hotel and airline dining programs, so it is possible that you could double dip if a restaurant is in both. I could be wrong about this though. A fellow travel hacker noted though, that the list of restaurants seemed to be identical to iDine, which is on Rewards Network, so double dipping might not be possible. Also, it looks like only Visa, Mastercard, and American Express cards can be enrolled, so no Discover cards.
You can find cashback restaurants by including the term “cash back” in your search (can be combined with other terms, so you can search “cash back indian“.) You can also select the Cash Back filter in the mobile app or desktop website.
I was sent these instructions on how it would work. It looks like online orders are excluded, and they will send a credit to the first card you linked at the end of the month with your accumulated cashback. I hope the credit doesn’t mean you lose points on the cashback earned though, but that is likely the case. I might recommend linking a debit card first, then a points earning credit card. If you already linked a credit card first, you can remove it from your Account Settings -> Payment Information.
I’ll see if this actually affects which restaurants I decide to eat at! My common criticism of the various other dining programs is they never had enough density or restaurants that I wanted to eat at.
You can read the announcement here:
https://www.yelpblog.com/2016/12/earn-rewards-save-local-businesses-yelp-cash-back
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