What??? $18 bucks for a salad??????
From Buzzfeed:
This is an actual receipt from Nello’s in New York City. The customer was Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who had no problem dropping 47k on food and drinks for himself and five other people.
A Billionaire’s Restaurant Check
Nov 2, ’09
8:04 PM
Comments
38 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.I’d love to be the waiter that got that tip!
What a lavish feck. I sure could use $47,221.09 right about now. I think lavish fecks should be forced to live on minimum wage for a while to gain some damn perspective.
Waiter, there seems to be some mistake–all I had was the minestrone!
Seriously, what do they do with the tip? Quite the windfall. Divvy it up among the crew I suppose.
That’s obscene!
$12.00 for a Large Water. Seriously.
Loaf of bread, jar of peanut butter, jar of jam… that’s my lunch for two weeks, and it costs less than a water at that place.
Blame the billionaire all you want, but those prices are ridiculous.
I’ll stick to drinking my water from the tap, thank you.
After reading some reviews of Nello it sounds like a pretty awful place to eat, too. Apparently folks just go there to be seen. I guess the food is average at best and the portions are tiny. One more reason I hate New York.
You know, it’s that darn La Tache Romanee Conti Vosne Grand Cote that get you every time. The ‘62 is a must.
http://www.wine-searcher.com/find/la+tache+romanee+conti+vosne+grand+cote+nuit+burgundy+france
There’s no way he enjoyed his meal that much. What a stupid, wasteful idiot.
I would have expected a fancier receipt. some beautiful caligraphy work on a scroll of papyrus maybe, carved titanium plates scientology style, or a golden plaque to be placed on the next voyager space probe. Come on, Nello’s.
why stupid and wasteful – you all make it like he’s burning the money. he has billions of dollars and is from another country. the more money he spends here the better. he just pumped NYC with half a million dollars.
If it’s worth $47k going in, I wonder what the residual value is coming out? Maybe the crapper at that restaurant gives change…
Well, if you subtract the wine and champagne from the list, the bill is too bad, I guess.
A lot of exciting things on that bill. $14 for a “parmesan chunk”? $12 for water? Any restaurant that can serve $5k bottles of wine should also be able to hand out some fine bottled (or tap) water to their guests free of charge. From what I can see Nello’s doesn’t even have a star in the Michelin Guide. Wonder what a star would do to their prices?
“I’m sorry, I only ordered 2 cappuccinos. Could you take that 3rd one off my bill?”
While most would deem this a profligate waste, allow me to couch it in very basic terms. Let’s assume that the guy is a billionaire and already has his money. Forget how he got it. Would you prefer that he *not* spend it? Ridiculous or not, putting that money back into the pot benefits many. The real crime is that not one, but two folks ordered blended Scotch!
Yeah folks, don’t hate on him and New York.
I just keep thinking about how many years a single family could have been fed with the cost of that one meal. That’s 1½ times my annual income. But it’s his money, so I really can’t criticize him for spending it how he wishes.
Still, even if did have that kind of cash, I’d feel like a chump for paying those prices for any food.
i wonder what al and peg bundy would do to get out of that pickel? i don’t think the stinky socks would cut it either.
Did anyone notice the time stamp on the bottom of the check? 2:39 in the afternoon. This was for LUNCH! Still, I agree with Jeff–at least it’s going back into the local economy and not sitting in a Swiss bank. And at least the rich guy presumably paid the entire check and didn’t have everyone at the table split it up, cause you know you would have been the chump who ordered the salad and didn’t drink.
Feels like money laundering to me…
Conspicuous consumption. The fact that everyone is talking about this guy the next day is worth a lot of money in itself. He made the impression and he paid for it, both to the people he was with at the time, and everyone else who learned about it. Yes,I could feed my family for many years of that bill, but that fact that a billionaire spent it to impress his friends doesn’t bother me as bad as the overblown prices themselves.
Clearly, money is an infallible measurement of value. I bet this $12 water is the best ever.
What a long way from Lenin’s house they traveled.
Just what constitutes a LARGE water? How much water does $12 buy?
I’m with fignuts on this one.
I had the same gut reaction of disgust that a lot of commenters had. But try to think what most of the world lives on, then reassess your own lunch tab. My peanut butter sandwich and grapes cost me what a lot of families in this world have in a week or more, just like Roman Abramovich spent more than my annual income on his lunch.
20% grat? WTF. All I ever got was 15% before tax. Well good for the waiter who took down 7 grand in one night… his tipout is going to be horrendous. Also, they must have been wasted drinking 2 bottle of Johnny Walker Blue. At least they retained the hard drinking if not the communism.
Waiter, there seems to be some mistake. You charged me forty bucks for spaghetti.
Well, did all that money have an alternative use? it’s private money.
Of course we can argue how he embezzled it from the Russian state during the sad Yeltsin years, but come on.
Notice the time on the receipt. This is LUNCH…
It’s the beverages that get you every time.
No way this was for only 6 people. You’re staring at 9 bottles of wine and 2 shots of Johnny Walker Blue… for lunch.
I really have no idea what most of those items are and is that 2 shots of Johnny Walker Blue or 2 bottles?
Think of it this way: it’s the cost of living in a different country. It’s not a geographically defined country, but it’s basically like a country nonetheless.
You remember that lottery winner Q&A that Chris linked to a while back? That guy talked of joining clubs for the wealthy and so on because of how difficult it can be to interact socially with people who do not share your level of wealth; by choosing circles in which everyone is megamoneybags you no longer have to worry about how your relative wealth is skewing the equation.
That’s why there are places like this restaurant: they are enclaves for the wealthy, parts of the distributed nation of the super-rich. And that’s why the prices of basic things are so expensive there – it’s just like the difference between the costs of basic items in London, say, and Karachi. Of course you can be megarich and not live in richland, but that comes at a cost: think how a relatively wealthy Western visitor to a third-world country is regarded by the local. Same deal, I guess.
Actually, the wine kind a smelled like cork. I dont know whats the big fuss about the bill, like you dont eat out. Ill eat at home till the end of the month. God, I hope Chelsea wont loose otherwise no eating out for me.
whats wrong with 9 bottles of wine and 2 shots of jw blue for lunch? sure hope the waiter shared the tip and if not, that would be crime.