As someone who casually waits tables from time to time, this is the kind of shit that pisses me off from restaurants. It’s rough enough without having every third customer thinking I’m trying to screw them out of money because some other jackass pulls this shit.
Sounds like a giant scam.
How many other people just quietly paid their bills and resented the place for it? Probably endless dozens more.
Not sure how this is legal.
‘oh you ordered a coke? I thought you wanted the coke with gold ice cubes that cost $100’
Sounds like the time our dog ate some Xmas tree tinsel. But cheaper.
I’d get very angry if something like this happened to me. I’d probably try to leave without paying. Does the restaurant keep heavyweight thugs on hand to block the escape route?
Did it give him tinselitus?
They keep the cops on speeddial.
Sounds to me like there is a perfectly good reason for gold foil - though perhaps not for the customer - but certainly for the owner of the restaurant.
I am so fed up with stories about people who have more money than they know what to do with. Naturally, these stories usually include people who know how to take advantage of these “golden” opportunities. They present an outrageous bill to the customer and that is just the beginning of the fun.
I resist getting the reputation of being a “know-it-all”. If I was one, I would try to tell you all about this scam and exactly what to do if you are the customer as well as what to do if you are the owner.
Surely the owner knows about this scam and if the customer is willing to pay the outrageous price or if they can be “persuaded” one way or another, then it is happy days for the owner.
If the customer decides to become loud and maybe put up some kind of fight - either legally or illegally - that is where the wrangling may begin. Maybe the owner will persuade the customer to pay a portion of the extortion. If not, what is the worst that can happen to the owner? They may get sued or they may have to endure a nasty story accompanied by a complaint to the BBB (Better Business Bureau). But I suspect that more often than not, the customer will just pay - especially if they are there with their spouse and/or some guests. They may decide they do not want to appear to be “cheap” in front of their guests.
If I am correct about this scam, I would guess the owner wins maybe enough of the time to make this very profitable. The owner will not care about any bad publicity. The profit will more than make up for any complaints about the restaurant. After all, what is the worst that can happen to the owner? It seems to me to be extremely difficult to convict them of a crime. Bottom line? I think someone may have discovered a wonderful - even “golden” opportunity - to make a whole bunch of money with very little risk. Consider the risk v reward ratio. That should make things very clear.
What a scam!
The only defense may be to make sure the waiter quotes the full price before ordering. So sad!
We don’t know for sure that he didn’t order the gold steak and try to weasel his way out of it. It is a douche said-douche said situation.
Yeah, I was about to say, this whole news story is based on a Facebook post by the customer.
That article tries to make a big deal out of the customer ordering a bunch of $25-$50 menu items. But, no matter how many $45 appetizers or drinks the guy bought, there’s still a very significant difference between a $250 steak and a $1,000 one and I can’t see myself feeling like “Ha, ha, that’s what you get you $33 item orderer!” when they throw another $750(x3) onto the bill.
Edible gold foil is a conspicuous consumption item, it’s something expensive to add to show off that you’ve got money to spend or just to eat something particularly extravagant for the sake of extravagance. It’s not generally some kind of scam by the restaurant owner, it’s catering to people who want to spend money. I find it hard to believe the story that this guy went to a really expensive restaurant and they tried to push the gold-wrapped steak on him as some kind of scam, it sounds more like the guy trying to scam the restaurant or get his 15 minutes of fame with the public dispute and ‘lab analysis’ of the gold.
I doubt that the customer is trying to scam the restaurant by ordering the expensive item but disputing the bill. If he wanted a really good steak, he was getting that already (at least, I would hope so, at those prices). The only reason to want the gold foil is to show off “Look, I can waste money!”, and if he disputes the bill, he’s not getting that benefit.
It is, of course, still possible that he’s lying about it, not to get an expensive steak, but just to get attention.
It’s pretty amazing to me that gold is used in so many ways, some useful but mostly frivolous, considering that all of it that has ever been mined can fit into a 20 meter per side cube…
I read the thread title as “SORRY about unexpectedly large steakhouse bill” and assumed this was a business-expense-reimbursement story.
Like that time I tried to no avail to convince my colleagues that NO, Ruth’s Chris is not similar in price to an Outback, and YES, if we are going we need to dress up, or at least not wear ratty shorts. Luckily I was not most-senior-in-country* so the meal did not go on my card nor my expense report.
*The rule in the large multi-national company I worked for was that the most-senior person in attendance from the country you were in paid the bill and did the expense reporting. If no one from the host country was attending it devolved to simply most-senior or separate checks. More than once I was the one to pay for meal expenses for a senior director, even though I was pretty low in the hierarchy at my office. Got lots of credit card points, so it was OK by me.
Here’s the menu:
https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/r3KaMH3bizGYRWc30G-BUQ/o.jpg
I mean, if my steak came out covered in gold, I probably would’ve said something about it.
Exactly. In fact, by disputing the bill (and making a public stink), he’s pretty much saying that he’s absolutely NOT the kind of guy who can throw around an extra $2,250 on gold foil and not care. The diametric opposite of why you’d order the foil in the first place.
I just want to add in that at many restaurants the lighting is so dim and the writing on menus so strange its often hard to see the prices.
For high-end steak, I could totally see that. For Christmas, I bought my brother 8 oz of Grade A5 Japanese Wagyu which was on sale for $100. And that’s just the raw product. You still have to cook it and not screw it up. (He tried it side by side with some more normally pricey dry-aged ribeye at $40-50/lb, and said he was surprised at how much difference there was between the two.) A Tomahawk is also a really big piece of steak. That said, I don’t get the sense this place is necessarily using ultra high-end Japanese (or similar) beef.
That said, tomahawks at a really good steakhouse usually are something around $100-$125.
A friend and I spent $290 + tip at the Capital Grille on Christmas Eve. 2 starters, 2 steaks, 2 sides (to share), 2 martinis, 2 glasses of red wine, 2 dessert wines.
We fully expected to spend around $400 + tip and were slightly disappointed in ourselves.
Note: this was the whole of our Christmas. Neither of us have family to buy presents for, so we decided we could go all out on a Christmas meal.
ETA: My point, I Guess, is that there is no question that a high end steak house can be expensive, but $275 just for a steak is pretty far out!
Silver foil is also edible. Certain Desserts in India are commonly covered with edible silver foil. It doesn’t add significantly to the price.