Crescent City...
You see this every December: Well-meaning people walk into restaurants, approach the host's stand with a wad of bills, and leave with gift certificates, which they'll hand out to friends and business associates. They'll smile and say thank you. And then, if tradition holds, they'll stuff the gift certificate in a drawer, to wait for a special occasion.
And then, months later, the recipients will read that the restaurant has closed.
... ¡Pasión! ...
They'll reach out to us and ask what to do with the gift certificate. To which the answer, in 99 percent of the cases, is along the lines of: "Apply glue to the back and use it to cover a crack in your wall. You're stuck."
We all love independent restaurants. They're the backbone of our economy and help define a city. They're also highly volatile businesses, subject to sudden closings. Owner retires to Thailand (Deux Cheminees). The celebrity chef creates a buzz-kill by taking a lucrative second job elsewhere (¡Pasión! ). Slow business (Pif, Crescent City). Owner burns out (La Vigna).
Ethical restaurateurs, who know that the restaurant is in its final days, will not sell gift certificates. (On the flip side, I remember that Odeon, once on 12th Street near Sansom, was selling gift certificates up to Christmas Eve 1994. It closed after New Year's Eve.)
But any given restaurant -- ethically run or not -- will have "paper" out on the street. State laws say that gift certificates never expire and that holders of certificates are truly creditors of the corporations that issue them. But hah. Try to collect on that. Striped Bass, at the time of its bankruptcy under Neil Stein, had more than $50,000 on the books. Toward the end of his run, Stein declined to honor certificates because he had donated many to charities and not been directly paid for then.
My recommendations: If you feel you have to buy a restaurant gift certificate, swallow pride and go to a chain. Marathon Grill has five locations. Iron Hill and Kildare's are popping up everywhere. The Stephen Starr restaurants' gift cards are good at each of his dozen places in Philly. Then, insist that the recipient to use it right away. Don't "wait for a special occasion." A free meal is a special occasion!
Or just take the recipient out to dinner and pick up the tab -- assuming you actually like the person.