Mobile Spinach, a Groupon-like site based in San Francisco, offers restaurant deals that seems too good to be true. Which just might be the case. Grub Street reports that the coupon site offers half-off deals at such feted places like Boulevard, Delfina, and Mama's, just to name a few. Turns out none of those restaurants agreed to such an offer.

Grub Street reports:

The site purports to have exclusive local deals, all the same "$5 for $10 of ___" at places like Gary Danko, Cotogna, and other high-profile San Francisco restaurants, but when Grub Street contacted some of the restaurants to inquire, reps all said the same thing: They knew nothing about Mobile Spinach and say they weren't even contacted by them.

Danko and most of the more noteworthy restaurants have all been pulled from the site since Grub's reports went live. The first featured deal today was Mama's. When they got themselves removed, it changed to Delfina. And now it's some tiny greek restaurant, Pera.

Nancy Oakes at Boulevard explained to Grub, "What a scam!" and says that her restaurant never agreed to such a thing. Founders Anthony and John Vitti have yet to comment of respond to accusations.

Also, and if that wasn't questionable enough, it gets worse. According to Richmond SF blogger Sarah B., "they basically admitted they put offers out 'on spec' and after they get a lot of responses, they THEN approach the restaurants to rope them in."

[Grub]