# NYC establishment is the Bernie Madoff of restaurants **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 9, 2012, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283 "2012-04-09T18:15:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/it_s_not_rocket_surgery/32/312_2.png) [@It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/It_s_Not_Rocket_Surgery)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/1 "2012-04-09T18:15:45Z")
From Boing Boing: [http://boingboing.net/2012/04/09/headed-to-new-york-watch-out.html](http://boingboing.net/2012/04/09/headed-to-new-york-watch-out.html) Wow. A salad for $49! The unpriced special was $275! $15 for a water! If you go, pay in Zimbabwe or Confederate dollars. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/2 "2012-04-09T18:19:14Z")
That’s one hell of a con job, but I have to admit I laughed at the price of water. That’s a dirty _sneaky_ trick. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/3 "2012-04-09T18:33:03Z")
You pay the money to keep the riff-raff (you and me) out. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/4 "2012-04-09T18:33:48Z")
Does anybody just flat out refuse to pay? ---
**Author:** ![It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/it_s_not_rocket_surgery/32/312_2.png) [@It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/It_s_Not_Rocket_Surgery)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/5 "2012-04-09T18:35:55Z")
[I found this on Yelp](http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/Gzwpeu4rw8T-XDYCllegxQ?select=wt6JyApHeY_U64IiUIhkSg). Anyone know the market price of those wines? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/6 "2012-04-09T18:44:04Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > Does anybody just flat out refuse to pay? Better question: why would anybody pay? ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/7 "2012-04-09T18:49:06Z")
> [@It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](#): > > [I found this on Yelp](http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/Gzwpeu4rw8T-XDYCllegxQ?select=wt6JyApHeY_U64IiUIhkSg). > > Anyone know the market price of those wines? With the exception of the champagne, it’s impossible to say with the information given. At the very least, we’d need the year, and the Petrus doesn’t say the vineyard. That said, Petrus and La Tache are two very good, very old French wineries. Even their low-end bottles can be several hundred dollars. Can their high end be in the thousands of dollars? Yeah, but I would expect it to be a very old, spectacular bottle. I’m guessing it was just a big markup on a decent wine. The magnum of Cristal Rose (assuming it’s non-vintage), on the other hand, runs about [$400](http://www.wine-searcher.com/find/cristal+rose+magnum) a bottle. So yeah, $5000 at the restaurant is a bit of a markup - standard restaurant markups on wine are around 300%, so I’d expect to pay $1200 a bottle for that one. (For the record, a “Magnum” is the equivalent of 2 standard bottles, so even though it’s a crazy, over-the-top price, you’re at least getting a bunch of it.) ---
**Author:** ![It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/it_s_not_rocket_surgery/32/312_2.png) [@It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/It_s_Not_Rocket_Surgery)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/8 "2012-04-09T18:54:09Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Better question: why would anybody pay? Heck, even if half their customers manage to get their charges reversed, that still leaves a tidy profit. ---
**Author:** ![Enderw24](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba9def/32.png) [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/9 "2012-04-09T18:56:55Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > Does anybody just flat out refuse to pay? I believe there’s actually a NY law which states something to the effect of you can only be compelled to pay the equivilant cost of an entree at a similar establishment if the item’s cost is undisclosed. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/10 "2012-04-09T18:57:57Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Better question: why would anybody pay? [QUOTE=Douglas Adams] "an Antarean parakeet gland stuck on a small stick is a revolting but much sought after cocktail delicacy and very large sums of money are often paid for them by very rich idiots who want to impress other very rich idiots." [/QUOTE] That’s why. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/11 "2012-04-09T21:34:08Z")
> [@spooje](#): > > You pay the money to keep the riff-raff (you and me) out. That doesn’t really work if you don’t disclose the prices until after people have eaten. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/12 "2012-04-09T22:32:07Z")
Nello is famous in NY as the place to go to see and be seen and eat mediocre food. Everyone knows it and it’s been the same way for 25 years. There’s maybe a half dozen of them around NY, some of them even harder to get into and serving even more mediocre food like [Raos](http://www.raos.com/raos-restaurant-new-york.aspx) ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/13 "2012-04-09T22:39:39Z")
I do not understand. Isn’t it a given that if prices aren’t disclosed, it’s going to be extremely expensive? ---
**Author:** ![Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellis_Aponte_Jr)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2012, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/14 "2012-04-10T06:18:39Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > I do not understand. Isn’t it a given that if prices aren’t disclosed, it’s going to be extremely expensive? Not that expensive. Here’s a little perspective… the Zagat family, who collect restaurant reviews from many contributors and publish a restaurant guide every year, determined which were the most expensive restaurants in New York City for 2011. Only three restaurants in the entire city came in with an average bill exceeding $200. Nello is charging $275 for a single pasta dish. Now, Nello is not even in the top 300 NYC restaurants in quality, possibly not even in the top 3,000. Something is clearly wrong here. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2012, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/15 "2012-04-10T08:44:26Z")
> [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](#): > > Not that expensive. Here’s a little perspective… the Zagat family, who collect restaurant reviews from many contributors and publish a restaurant guide every year, determined which were the most expensive restaurants in New York City for 2011. Only three restaurants in the entire city came in with an average bill exceeding $200. Nello is charging $275 for a single pasta dish. Now, Nello is not even in the top 300 NYC restaurants in quality, possibly not even in the top 3,000. Something is clearly wrong here. Well, it was for a white truffle pasta dish and “truffle supplements” tend to go for ~$75 - $100 at white tablecloth restaurants these days. So yes, Nello is still out of line but only by a factor of 3 - 4x. Honestly, what kind of rube walks into even a moderately fancy restaurant and not know that any truffle dish is likely to be several times the price of the next most expensive item? ---
**Author:** ![Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b38774/32.png) [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swords_to_Plowshares)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2012, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/16 "2012-04-10T12:27:18Z")
Nello in NY is well known to be a “rip”. It is not known for the food, but somehow as a place to see and be seen. By far my favorite New York Times restaurant review is that of Nello ([here](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/dining/reviews/14rest.html)). Edit - I just read the BoingBoing article and realized it linked and quoted the same review. ---
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2012, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/17 "2012-04-10T13:40:30Z")
reading the yelp reviews on this place shakes my faith in yelp in general. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2012, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/18 "2012-04-10T13:53:22Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > Well, it was for a white truffle pasta dish and “truffle supplements” tend to go for ~$75 - $100 at white tablecloth restaurants these days. So yes, Nello is still out of line but only by a factor of 3 - 4x. Honestly, what kind of rube walks into even a moderately fancy restaurant and not know that any truffle dish is likely to be several times the price of the next most expensive item? Gee, I don’t know. Maybe one or two of the tens of millions of people who visit NYC each year from all around the world, who (_les pauvres_!) may not be as hip & with-it as your average Doper who sprang from the womb knowing the market rate for truffles, and may (_incroyable_!) not even know what the fuck a truffle is to begin with? ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2012, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/19 "2012-04-10T15:53:46Z")
> [@It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](#): > > [I found this on Yelp](http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/Gzwpeu4rw8T-XDYCllegxQ?select=wt6JyApHeY_U64IiUIhkSg). > > Anyone know the market price of those wines? > [@Athena](#): > > With the exception of the champagne, it’s impossible to say with the information given. At the very least, we’d need the year, and the Petrus doesn’t say the vineyard. > > That said, Petrus and La Tache are two very good, very old French wineries. Even their low-end bottles can be several hundred dollars. Can their high end be in the thousands of dollars? Yeah, but I would expect it to be a very old, spectacular bottle. I’m guessing it was just a big markup on a decent wine. > > The magnum of Cristal Rose (assuming it’s non-vintage), on the other hand, runs about [$400](http://www.wine-searcher.com/find/cristal+rose+magnum) a bottle. So yeah, $5000 at the restaurant is a bit of a markup - standard restaurant markups on wine are around 300%, so I’d expect to pay $1200 a bottle for that one. (For the record, a “Magnum” is the equivalent of 2 standard bottles, so even though it’s a crazy, over-the-top price, you’re at least getting a bunch of it.) Chateau Pétrus is the vineyard (as well as the winery), [about 28 acres](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A9trus_(wine)) from the wiki. It’s the tradition on both Banks in Bordeaux for the main wine to come from vineyards surrounding the chateau. I’d have to dig out a reference work to confirm, but I’m fairly sure that the grand cru comes only from grapes grown at the chateau’s estate vineyards—which can be fairly extensive, in the case of some of the Left Bank properties ([Lafite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_Lafite_Rothschild)’s 264 acres, per the wiki). This is different from, say, Burgundy, where one vineyard, e.g., Clos Vougeot, can have 20+ properties making wine from it, and each property will often make wine from more than 10 different vineyards. My quick messing around with Google shopper and [wine.com](http://wine.com) yielded a ballpark price for the newer vintages of about [$2500-2800 per bottle](http://www.wine.com/v6/search/?term=petrus). This can of course, [dramatically escalate](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1839963.stm) depending on vintage, storage, provenance, etc… [La Tâche](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_T%C3%A2che_AOC) is a monopole vineyard, around 12.5 acres, of the [Domaine de La Romanée-Conti](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domaine_de_la_Roman%C3%A9e-Conti). Like Pétrus, it’s definitely a “if you have to ask…” wine as far as pricing goes. Assuming you can even find it, the latest vintages are going to run ~$1400-1600, [pre-sale](http://www.wine.com/V6/Dom-de-la-Romanee-Conti-La-Tache-Grand-Cru-2004/wine/91526/detail.aspx). Ditto the above notes about vintage, storage, provenance. In addition, I’d be really suspicious of fakes. I’d be very surprised if Louis Roederer had any non-vintage Cristal, given it’s a prestige cuvée, and those are usually from declared vintages. Compared to the previous two wines mentioned, Roederer makes a boatload of it. I had a difficult time finding production numbers for Cristal, but[this site](http://champagnelover.tumblr.com/page/5) claims they make 300 to 400k bottles a year (25k to 33k cases). Ballpark, the total production of Cristal is about 10X the production of Pétrus, and about 25X the production of La Tâche. The Rosé production is going to be a lot smaller though. Rose Champagne is quite a bit more expensive that regular Champagne, and my searches for Cristal Rosé in magnum yielded a ballpark price of $1400-1700. Still a lot cheaper than $5k. I haven’t done the experiments myself, but people who are really into Champagne will pay a premium for it in magnum, the thought being that it ages better. FWIW, IMHO, 3x markup for the top end of a wine list (and Pétrus/La Tâche definitely qualify) strikes me as obscene. Then again, that seems to be the overall theme of the restaurant. ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2012, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283/20 "2012-04-10T16:09:05Z")
Missed the edit window, but [John Mariani from Esquire](http://www.esquire.com/blogs/food-for-men/white-truffles-112910) mentions the following about white truffles and their pricing: > [@](#): > > Of course, in restaurants , you can easily pay $75 to $100 for a plate of noodles with white truffles. At Thomas Keller’s Per Se in New York, a risotto “spiked” with white truffles is a $250 supplement on the nine-course, $275 fixed-price menu. Mario Batali is charging a mere $300 for a white-truffle tasting menu. And most restaurateurs will insist, probably correctly, that they don’t make any money off such dishes. One thing I’m finding hilarious in searching for pricing on white truffle dinners/dishes, is that foodies will wax orgasmic about the various white truffle tastings they’ve attended, but no one seems to want to say how much the affair cost them. Draw your own conclusions. OTOH, this magazine article mentioned a [white truffle tasting dinner with wine](http://www.hauteliving.com/2010/10/valentino-santa-monica-announces-white-truffle-piemontese-evening-with-dogliani-wines/) at Valentino in Santa Monica, CA in 2010. Valentino’s supposed to be one of the better Italian restaurants in the entire U.S. The dinner was listed at only $200 a head, which is frankly a lot less than I thought it would be. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyc-establishment-is-the-bernie-madoff-of-restaurants/618283.md?page=2)