I am getting suspicious enough about such postings on Facebook that I swear, if I were going to one of these level expensive places I would covertly record the exchange with the waiter when I make my order so I can prove without a doubt that I did not order or could prove the waitron was scamming [though I always confirm prices by stating the dollars/cents clearly - You mean thirty five dollars and fifty cents…I have worked in places that did carry multithousand dollar bottles and am aware how many scams can be worked. SInce we are going to be living within fancy dinner driving distance of Las Vegas and Reno, having a liking of going out a couple times a year for a seriously expensive fancy specialty dinner, we are going to have to be aware of this type of possible scam. Also, having serious allergies, if I think it warranted, I would like to prove that I indeed did specify something without whatever ingredient I need to avoid [at a place in Vegas we asked for the bread basket to be removed because one of the offerings in the basket had mushrooms and while I don’t think something from the opposite end would be contaminated by direct contact, the person handling the shroom bread is also touching the nonshroom bread and I refuse to risk even that slight a cross contamination. When I explained it to the waiter, he was perfectly wonderful about it, and making sure that he pointed out everything that I couldn’t have, and the chef was careful when he prepped my stuff as well. He actually made me a special side from scratch to avoid the one they normally made that would have been a problem =) ]
[in Las Vegas the place mrAru and I had dinner had a bottle of some sort of brandy that was selling for around a thousand bucks a SHOT …]
I’ve had silver-wrapped chicken at numerous Chinese restaurants. I never eat the silver wrapping though. The one time I tried, the instant the silver touched my fillings, I nearly went through the ceiling.
In northern California wine country a slightly (not super) upscale eatery served show-off drinkers genuine mezcal at US$250 per shot. We bought the exact same product in Mitla, Oaxaca for US$15 per liter. I guess their shipping charge was steep.
Question: Did the ordinary bartender pout and serve it?
The same for the $1300 bottle of wine. would they have an ordinary waiter deliver it?
the reason I’m asking is I would think anyone getting a product that cost so much would have the manager or other high level person bring it out. I mean what if the bartender spilled that $600 shot or the waiter dropped that bottle?
And how the hell could you as a consumer know if its a scam like if they took the label off one bottle of wine and stuck in on another or maybe they did the same with that whiskey? Ordinary bars all the time will put cheap whiskey in say a Jack Daniels bottle.
Ooh! Ooh! Mr. Athena and I almost BECAME one of those stories!
We were in London on vacation this past fall, and one rainy day we found ourselves near the Savoy Hotel. A friend of ours had said it’s worthwhile to duck into the bar there and have a drink since it’s such a gorgeous and historic place. It being rainy and us being thirsty, we decided now was the time.
We sat at the bar, and perused their fancy seasonal cocktail list. One part of the list talked about “Vintage” cocktails, which we interpreted as being the classics - Sidecars, Vespers, etc. The other part of the list was their own concoctions, and that’s the side we ordered off.
Later on, I was looking at their non-seasonal list, which had the same Vintage section. Only this time, it went into more depth, and explained that “Vintage” meant that the cocktails were made with vintage booze. Like, a bottle of Cognac from 1785, that kind of thing. And this menu listed the prices for the Vintage, which the other one did not (I think it said something like "varies depending on the cocktail itself.).
Most of those cocktails were $1K+ :eek:
It would be totally and completely in character for one of us to have ordered one of those, thinking to ourselves “this is expensive but I’m on vacation and it’ll be a splurge.” But splurge, to us, is like… maybe $80, tops, because the cocktail has some expensive booze in it. It never even occurred to us that a cocktail could be 4 figures. We dodged a bullet.
The wife and I just ate there (in DC) last night. That was one tasty slice of meat heaven! No gold wrapping though :(.
The wife and I talked about this last night at the Capital Grille. We both worked in restaurants in our younger days, and we discussed some of the drink and dinner embellishments that the owners would come up with, for no reason other than to see if people would pay stupid money just to say they did. And we’d just shake our heads when someone would order it realizing how amazing stupid it was.
One thing that I could remember was the lobster wrapped in fresh seaweed. We’d knock out the lobster wrap it in seaweed and boil it with the seaweed attached. We take it to the table, and the chef would cut the lobster out of the seaweed, and open it at the table, and serve the tail and claw meat. It was like $125! Man, we crank those things out!. How amazing stupid it was.
The good thing? Our tips would (sometimes) skyrocket with it!
In the “unexpectedly large bill” department, there’s also this story:
Summary: a restaurant in Rome lists a “seafood-mixed dish” menu item at 6.5 Euros per 100 grams. The unwritten detail is that the dish actually weighs in at 2 kilos, which mean the final cost is about 130 Euros. Surprise!
It’s possible that some places have a gold-wrapped option even without expecting to sell any, just for the perceived value. “Yeah, we ate at this super-fancy steakhouse. How fancy? Well, you can order a steak covered in gold there.” Never mind that the person telling the story didn’t actually order the gold, but it’s the sort of steakhouse where they could have.
