As a matter of fact, when I think about the places my family frequents, I think of weekly routine rather than special occasion. I frequently work out of Panera Bread, meet with friends at Starbucks, and take my family out for a weekly ice-cream treat at Ben & Jerry’s on the Commons. And I challenge anyone to call Chik-Fil-A and Five Guys expensive!

For now I reserve shopping at some of the NH boutiques for when I win the lottery. But after countless shopping trips to NH Target, I feel I can find anything in that store with my eyes closed. Ditto for JC Penney. Learning Express turned out to be a surprisingly affordable place for quality toys, especially since we got on their mailing list and started getting discount coupons.

Then there’s the whole thing about entertaining at North Hills. Well, it’s winter time now and things are a bit slow. But come summer, we’ll be driving to NH every Thursday evening to enjoy free Beach Music Series concerts. There are also lots of free family-friendly events hosted throughout the year, including Halloween and Christmas at North Hills.

As I thought about it some more, I remembered the many times we invited our out-of-town guests for an evening out at North Hills without worrying about breaking our entertainment budget.

What are your favorite budget-friendly places and things to do at NH?

About the Author: Yelena McManaman of OneClickVA is a Social Media Specialist, helping small business owners implement their social media marketing strategist for measurable results.

Share This

Also, we have added an event calendar (see the sidebar on the right). If you would like us to add any of your events in the North Hills area, please feel free to let us know!

Lastly, we have made it easier for you to contribute articles and share the latest news about North Hills. If you click on the “Submit a Story” link, you can easily submit your story and we’ll be able to easily approve it before it goes live on the site. Feel free to take advantage of this, but please no spam or self-promotion. We have other arrangements for advertising, so this is meant to be more of a “news from the community” feature.

We hope you enjoy the new look of North Hills Buzz and please let us know what you think!

Share This

I’ve also heard that Q Shack now has sweet potatoe FRIES. If they’re anywhere near as good as their sweet mashed potatoes, then you’ll definitely want to check them out.

Share This

We had actually planned on eating at Coquette. We thought it was open for breakfast at 7am every morning, but when we showed up at 7:45 it was closed. Not a big deal, as I enjoyed my bacon, egg and cheese biscuit that I got at Hot Point. Checking their hours now, it says they’re only open for brunch on Sundays.

The interesting thing I noticed this morning when looking for Coquette’s menu was that their main website doesn’t show up on the first or second page of google for a search for “coquette north hills” (no quotes). It looks like they covered most of their search engine optimization bases, as they do show up for searches for “coquette” and “coquette raleigh”, as well as further down the page for “coquette north hills raleigh”. But they are missing out on “coquette north hills.”

Let’s be honest. It’s not a huge problem for people who are like me and were determined to find their website. But what if it was a potential customer who was in a hurry and wasn’t web-saavy? Maybe they would search “coquette north hills” and when they don’t see anything, maybe they decided to go somewhere else since they can’t find the menu/hours/phone number/whatever they’re looking for. 99% of the time they may still find it another way, but maybe that 1% costs a restauarant a couple hundred dollars in business over a year.

Obviously I’m being nit-picky, but if you’re a local business, you shouldn’t overlook little details like this, especially since they don’t take too much time/money to fix. Hey, maybe they’ll hire me to fix it for them

Share This

Last night I went to Bonefish with my dad and decided to try filet mignon. Steak at a seafood place? Crazy, right? I was craving steak, but wasn’t sure what to expect. Everything I’ve ever had at Bonefish has been good-except the bread which has been a little hard a few times-but I had only ever ordered their seafood or salads.

I ordered my steak medium (actually split it with my dad, because I wasn’t that hungry). I’m happy to report that it was very tasty. I can’t say I’m surprised, since most everything Bonefish Grill has is great, but I was definitely impressed. Of course it wasn’t as good as a steak from The Angus Barn, but there are maybe a handful of restaurants that can compare to that. The filet I got last night was very satisfying.

Have you ever had steak at Bonefish Grill at North Hills? Feel free to share your thoughts about it here or let us know what your favorite Bonefish dish is.

Share This

This Saturday from 9:00am – 12:00pm chefs from Mura and Bonefish Grill will participate in the North Hills Iron Chef Competition to raise money for the Interfaith Food Shuttle. The chefs will use ingredients from the North Hills Farmers’ Market to prepare 3 dishes to be judged by a panel made up of food critics and local media.

Feel free to come out and watch this competition. $5 will get you a tasting ticket that you can use to sample some of the delicious food that will be made, and ticket proceeds will benefit the Interfaith Food Shuttle. There will only be 100 tasting tickets available for the public, so show up early, because it’s first-come, first-serve.

Sounds like a great event. What do you think?

Share This

According to CarolinaNewswire.com, this is the first of three Ruth’s Chris restaurants that will open in the Raleigh area in 2008.

You can read the full story here.

I still kind of miss JK’s bar menu, especially their Big Ass Burger, but I’ll definitely give Ruth’s Chris a try, since I’ve heard good things about it. What do you think about Ruth’s Chris coming to North Hills?

Share This

The Music

The Mardi Gras Band put on a good performance and when they took a break an emcee came out and encouraged people to come up front for some shag lessons. People seemed to be having a lot of fun and it was crowded, but not so much that it was uncomfortable.

The Luau

At around 8:30ish people started heading over to the luau at Mura. They had roped off an area outside Mura with tables, a Red Bull mini-bar, and a DJ who was spinning over by the fountain. There was a long line to get in, and the line wasn’t moving very quickly. But there was a girl passing out leis so this was a good distraction from the wait. We finally got to the front of the line and I found out that I’d mistakenly reported the price of admission and sushi. I’d heard it was $10, when it was really $15. But the money went to a good cause (Muscular Dystrophy Association) so I paid and went in.

We met up with the MyNC.com crew (see picture below), who were there getting the word out about their community website, which features sections for Raleigh, as well as other areas of North Carolina. I definitely think they’re doing some cool stuff with this, as it seems they understand the trend towards citizen journalism and user-generated news.

The Food

After talking with a few other friends and meeting some new people, we decided to investigate the food situation. Unfortunately there was no food yet (after 9pm). People had gathered by the one table where the sushi was going to be and were waiting to eat. Eventually they brought the sushi out but it took a while to get through the line to get food.

For the $15 admission fee you received two tickets, which were good for one plate of sushi each. I’m definitely glad I waited, as the sushi was excellent. The only things I would have done differently would be to get the sushi out earlier, utilize more than one table so the lines would be shorter and include some options for vegetarians — I’m not one, but I’ve come to accept them…I don’t make fun of them nearly as much as I used to

Overall it was a good event benefitting a great cause. For anyone else that attended the luau, what did you think?

The Pictures

See below for some pictures from the music and luau. Click the thumbnails twice to see the largest versions. You can also see these pictures and others on Flickr.

Share This

Here’s how Cinelli’s describes Grandma’s Pizza on their website:

Thin crust, baked in a pan, litely topped with mozzarella cheese & Italian plum tomatoes. Sprinkled with Olive Oil, fresh garlic, basil and oregano. An Olde World Recipe that dates back to our Grandma and her Grandma, brought to NY by our mother and now brought here to NC by the Cinelli brothers.

The extra herbs and fresh ingredients give this pizza a great flavor. I highly recommend it.

Check out the video below to hear what Taylor thought about Cinelli’s and Grandma’s Pizza.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Share This

If you’re curious about what this will look like, here’s some pictures to think about. Remember, they’re conceptual so this may not be exactly how things will look when they’re finished in 2010 or so. Click the pictures for larger versions.

In this first picture, the Hyatt Summerfield Suites is the building on the right. St. Alban’s is the first building on the left and The Cardinal (continuing care retirement community) is at the end of the green area at the far back of the picture.

????????

The second rendering shows the view from the reverse angle (coming from The Cardinal). The Hyatt Summerfield Suites is on the left. You can see that there will be retail spaces on the ground level in this building.

From both of these renderings, it looks like there will be exciting things going on in this area in the future.Thanks to Meghan at Capstrat for sending over these great renderings!

Share This