Not only did he leave the massive tip unexpectedly, he outlined who at the restaurant should get what — $1,000 for the chef and $500 each for the server and owner of the restaurant, reports the Washington Post.
The man lives nearby and comes to the bar a few times a month, the owner told the paper, and has taken a liking to the restaurant’s gumbo. He has emailed with the chef and the owner in the past over food pairings and beer selection. The chef had recently emailed with the regular, asking him to tell him when he was coming in the next time so he could make the gumbo he liked.
With a date set up for Monday for the gumbo, the customer and his friend dined on gumbo, fried chicken, sides and beer, and even got two quarts of the stuff on the house as a “thank you.”
It wasn’t until after the bartnder was cleaning up that she noticed the receipt had a huge tip tacked on to the $93 total, with a note reading “Thank you for the Gumbo!”
“I was in utter shock,” she said. “I was completely speechless. I had to do a double take.”
She showed her boss the receipt, and he was surprised as well, sending a thank-you email to the patron the next day.
“This is the kind of stuff you see in the restaurant business that happens to some guy in the Midwest or the West Coast,” he said. “You think, who are these people who give these extraordinarily generous tips that just made a server or bartender’s day? And then sure enough, it happened to us.”
As for the anonymous customer, he told the owner he’s happy with what the restaurant has built and that he’s proud to be a customer. Two thousand dollars worth of happy, it seems.
After gumbo and beer, customer leaves a $2,000 tip at a D.C. restaurant [Washington Post]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
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