The Bill of the Week?

After back to school night we spent an hour at a local pub with two other couples.  Three burgers, a salad and a piece of fish, 5 beers and 5 glasses of wine later we paid our £80 tab and were gone. 

We're a bunch of pikers.

An column in the City AM newspaper displays a photo copy of an extra-ordinary bar tab and then a description of what they bought.  They never disclose whose bill it is, but they do describe the restaurant, so I assume they are the ones who rat out the corporate account abusers.  An example:

THE CHAMPAGNE lounge at Kensington members club Amika is described as “the home of extravagance and indulgence”. And no-one reading this week’s bill would argue with that, because if two jeroboams of Cristal at £5,500 apiece don’t justify the description, then nothing will. Also making an appearance over the four international financiers’ £15,900 Saturday night out were a £1,840 bottle of Grey Goose vodka and a £940 bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label King George V – a blend of spirits produced only from distilleries that operated during the reign of the House of Windsor’s first monarch.

So The Capitalist is sure the eight Cokes on the bill were for refreshment and not for pouring into the “exquisite” whisky, made from malts so rare some of them no longer exist. After all, the club that styles itself as “the bedrock of elegance and sophistication” would expect nothing less.

THE ANTHOLOGIST, the Drake & Morgan-owned sister establishment to The Drift in the Heron Tower and The Parlour in Canary Wharf, is known for its mixology. So when six stockbrokers descended on the Gresham Street restaurant and bar, it was cocktails all round – from a Cream Tea Martini containing double-strength Earl Grey tea syrup to a Grapefruit Old Fashioned made with bloom gin and rhubarb bitters.

The extremely liquid lunch – accompanied by three courses of food as an afterthought – continued with two bottles of Dom Perignon champagne, six bottles of red and white wine from the restaurant’s cellar and then port, whisky, Kahlua, pudding shots and Baileys. At the final reckoning, the lengthy list of largely alcoholic refreshments came to a hazy £1,239.