Who hasn't wished they could splurge at a fancy restaurant? Whenever most people go out to eat, they have to content themselves with the local burger joint or fast food chain. Trips to high-end bars and upscale restaurants are rare occasions, and once you've ordered your meal, drinking more than a single glass of insanely expensive, high-quality wine is not an option with your budget. Tipping the server is an endless series of calculations involving the rate your wallet is dwindling, how fancy the staff is dressed, and whether you know you'll show your face at the restaurant again.
Reading about the carelessly luxurious eating habits of celebrities lets us live (and eat) vicariously through them. How amazing would it be to walk into an elegant restaurant where the steaks are sourced exclusively from beer fed cows that have their own masseuses, and order whatever you want from the menu without bothering to check the price? Or to pick up the check when you're at a bar with all your friends and not worry about making rent this month? Read on to see how celebrities treat themselves and their entourage to the best food and alcohol in the world - and their servers to massive tips.
15 Beyonce Spends HOW Much On Nando's Chicken?
Nando's has a reputation for serving delicious Portuguese style peri-peri chicken, and more importantly, Beyoncé is a fan. She ordered 48 chickens from an outlet in Essex after giving a concert in the rain. Obviously it wasn't all for her - she probably thought her entourage deserved a treat after toting sound equipment through a downpour. Beyoncé isn't the only celebrity Nando's fan, however, as Ed Sheeran, Prince Harry, and Drake have all been spotted picking up Nando's chicken. There are rumors of a special Nando's black card that is only given to celebrities and entitles them to eat there for free (Ed Sheeran reportedly has one) but we don't think Beyoncé takes advantage of that. Her receipt indicates that she paid the full £1,444.10 in cash. We bet the delivery guy got a fantastic tip as well.
14 Tipping Is Not LeSean McCoy's Game
When Philadelphia burger joint PYT tweeted a photo of LeSean McCoy's bill - the twenty cent tip prominently displayed, along with his signature - sports fans initially thought that it was a hoax. When reporters contacted McCoy about the receipt, however, he confessed that it was genuine. He claimed that he received terrible service from the restaurant and left the poor tip as a statement. How terrible does the service have to be for someone to leave a twenty cent tip? Did they serve him a leather shoe in a stale bun or something? His comments fueled Internet outrage, causing a minor Twitter scandal that culminated in Charlie Sheen pledging to track down the waiter or waitress and give them $1000. There's no information on whether Sheen actually managed to make reparations for McCoy's faux pas. Though he did send himself a self-congratulatory tweet for being such a gentleman.
13 Donnie Wahlberg Loves Waffles Enough To Tip $2000 For Them
In a move that gave him more publicity than all of the New Kids on the Block reunion concerts combined, Donnie Wahlberg left a $2000 tip for the employees of a Waffle House in North Carolina. The stunned waitstaff plastered the receipt with the generous tip all over social media. This is a shift from his former identity as the rebel of his boy band - back in the 90s, he got charged with arson when he allegedly ignited a puddle of vodka in his hotel room in Kentucky, burning a small square of carpet and leaving a mess for the hotel maids to clean up the next day. Could he be trying to make amends for that crime against the service industry? Maybe his role in Blue Bloods is giving him a newfound respect for the working class.
12 You'll Be Surprised At How Much Controversy Lionel Messi's Five-Figure Bill Caused
When Lionel Messi, his fiancée, and several other soccer players spent a weekend in Ibiza, he posted Instagram photos of the group enjoying time at the Club Restaurant Cabaret. A few minutes after the group photo went up, a waiter at the club posted an image of what he claimed was Messi's £37,000 drinks receipt. Did three professional athletes and their WAGs drink five figures worth of booze in one night? Messi tweeted the next day that the bill wasn't his, but by then the image had gone viral. Soccer fans couldn't believe that one of their favorite sports stars could blow that much money at a bar. They couldn't believe that he was telling the truth about the bill not being his, either. Who else in Ibiza even has that much money?
11 Peyton Manning Didn't Notice The Service Charge
When Peyton Manning went to the Angus Barn restaurant in North Carolina, he decided to show his appreciation for his $739 meal by leaving a 25% tip. Whether he did or didn't notice that there was already an 18% service charge on his meal, making his tip more like half the bill, his waiter clearly thought the famous quarterback had made a major oversight. Instead of quietly pocketing the extra money, the waiter posted a photo of the receipt to social media. Did it bother Manning? Given that the same week the photo went viral, Manning left the Colts - the team he'd played on for over a decade - we doubt that it was even on his radar. The restaurant manager, however, saw it as negative publicity and fired the camera-happy waiter.
10 Andy Murray Spent $5000 On Food And Booze For His Friends After He Won The US Open But Guess What He Drank?
After he won the US Open, Andy Murray took his friends out to an NYC bar to celebrate. They ordered more than enough drinks to soak up the thirty $168 meals at the bar (who knew bar food could cost that much!), but Andy didn't even drink a drop of alcohol. According to Eurosport, Murray only drank a single lemon soda. This man is just superhuman. We don't know if we could treat all our friends without imbibing ourselves, much less after the stress of competing in one of the most prestigious tennis competitions in the world. Didn't he deserve to let loose after months of grueling athletic training? Maybe this is why we aren't pro athletes. If we made that much money playing tennis, we'd blow it on Alex Hope levels of alcohol.
9 You Won't Believe What Drink Cost Rihanna $400
When Rihanna Snapped her $30,000 restaurant bill, her fans couldn't believe that she'd actually spent that kind of money. $700 for potato salad? $8,000 for two orders of grilled lamb? For us, the $400 for nonspecific "Juice" is the kicker. What fruit is so rare that a restaurant can charge hundreds of dollars for its juice? We doubt it's some fruit no one's heard of, because they also charged her $400 for coconut water. It's entirely possible that Rihanna somehow doctored the receipt to play a joke on her fans - some of her Snapchat followers think this is the case - but if so, we can't imagine what she was thinking. The bill looks so legit. Why go through the effort of making a convincing fake restaurant receipt? Then again, why pay $400 for cole slaw?
8 Lebron James Could Have Bought An Entire Bar For This Much Money
Over the course of a single night in Vegas, Lebron James spent about $170,000. How many people did it take to drink 33 bottles of Cristal? The bill says that they only had one table, so James and his guests must have been seriously packing it in. After losing tons of money in the casino, we can't imagine blowing what little we had left on a gigantic bottle of champagne. And that thing was HUGE - the restaurant manager reported that it took two waiters just to carry it to Lebron's table. How do you even pour out something like that? What really gets us is the 22 orders of Fiji water for eight dollars a pop. Why order fancy spring water when you can just drink tap? Or, for added flavor, Bud Light.
7 When Drake Brings $200k To Vegas It Stays In Vegas
Were Lebron James and Drake in some kind of competition to see who could spend more in Vegas? If so, Drake won this round. He spent $180,000 at a Las Vegas bar, of which $100,000 went to four 15-liter bottles of something called Vueve. We honestly have no idea what that is, but then again, we've never bought a bottle of anything that cost more than $20. Given that there's no way for anyone, or any ten human beings to consume the amount of alcohol on Drake's bar bill, we're wondering if we can hover on the fringes of a celeb's entourage in Vegas and siphon off the excess liquor. We wouldn't drink it - this is a business opportunity. Would you join the secondhand celebrity liquor coupon club? Quick, let's patent this before someone else does.
6 Religious Website Censors Kim Kardashian With Her Own Restaurant Receipt
When Kim and Kanye traveled to Israel to baptize their daughter in a traditional Armenian cathedral, the mayor of Jerusalem himself took them out to dinner. Most of the citizens of Jerusalem are highly observant Jews who keep kosher, so the publicity photo of the reality star was controversial for two reasons: among Orthodox Jews, Kim Kardashian is considered a walking symbol of impropriety, and the restaurant where they were eating is not kosher. One of the menu items, a chicken in butter sauce, directly violates one of the central precepts of kosher law (not mixing milk with meat). Israeli websites were mainly concerned with their mayor eating unkosher food rather than dining with an unkosher reality star - they were able to handle Kim by covering her up with her own restaurant receipt and referring to her as "Mrs. West."
5 Do You Know Who Pays The Bill When The Redskins Eat Out?
Taking an entire football team out for dinner is no small feat. They'll fill up most of the restaurant and clear everything edible out of the kitchens. That bill is going to be in the five figures no matter what. Does the team split it equally? Or does the coach pay? According to the veteran players, it's actually the rookies who shill out for food whenever the team eats out. Veterans recently posted copies of a $22,000 restaurant bill, including some extremely expensive bottles of scotch and whiskey, along with a post thanking the rookies for their generosity. Apparently, it's a tradition for new members of the team to pay for not only their own meals but for the established players as well. Shouldn't that go the other way around? Come on, Redskins. With a name like that, you can't afford any controversy.
4 Famous Basketball Coach Gregg Popovich Leaves A $5000 Tip
Gregg Popovich, head coach of the San Antonio Spurs, coached his team to victory in the NBA championships five times - not something every NBA coach can boast of. Spurs fans affectionately refer to him as "Pop" and after twenty years of his coaching (and of consecutive winning seasons), can't imagine anyone else at the helm of the incredibly successful basketball team. He's certainly a championship tipper, as is evidenced by the receipt a server posted on Reddit after Popovich ate at McEwan's in Memphis, Tennessee. Popovich hasn't commented on the leaked receipt, but he is known to eat at McEwan's regularly. They must have served him an absolutely stellar wine. Popovich may be a basketball coach, but his passion is wine tasting and he is known to be quite the connoisseur - introducing him to a new variety would make him pretty grateful toward his servers.
3 Is Alex Hope Old Enough To Be Drinking All That Liquor?
This very young man actually became a celebrity due to his outrageous bar bill. English tabloids seized on the story of the young foreign currency trader who bought a £125,000 bottle of champagne (priced not for quality but for quantity; it had a volume of thirty liters and required two people to carry it) on top of £75,000 of booze and mixers. One entry on the receipt was for £30,000 of something called "VAT." Our readers who tend bar - does that mean he ordered a literal vat of alcohol? With all that liquor in them, we can't imagine he and his friends were good customers, so we're happy that the wait staff got to split a £18,000 service charge for the evening. It's a good thing they included it in the bill, because this guy doesn't look like he'd be a good tipper voluntarily.
2 Rudy Giuliani Shows Us The State Of Math Education in NYC
During his tenure as mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani famously appointed a police commissioner who ascribed to the "broken windows" theory of crime prevention. The gist of the theory is that a house with one broken window invites vandals to throw rocks through the unbroken windows, so to prevent major crimes, the police should crack down on people committing misdemeanors. See any problems with comparing a complicated urban society to an abandoned house in some suburb? We see some issues with this restaurant receipt, at least. A $197 bill plus $40 tip does not equal $217, Mr. Giuliani. Maybe you should have spent less time trying to fight crime and more time trying to improve the math education system in New York City. And for that matter, learning some math of your own.
1 Awww Justin Got Selena A Soda!
Jelena got back together this year, and it seems like Justin is trying hard to make amends for his many past transgressions. He can look back to the beginning of their relationship if he's looking for date inspiration. Back in 2011, a cashier at the soda counter on Santa Monica pier posted a receipt for a $2 coke charged to Justin's credit card, and later that day, tabloids reported that the two lovebirds were seen together in that location. In all the paparazzi photos, Justin is empty-handed but Selena is holding a coke. The only conclusion we can possibly make is that she got thirsty and he decided to treat her to a nice cold drink. Those small gestures show that he really did care about her at first, and can care for her again.
Sources: mirror.co.uk, bbc.com, blacksportsonline.com, hotspotatl.com, miaminewtimes.com, cbsnews.com, sbnation.com, eurosport.co.uk, espn.com, vanityfair.com, thestar.com, telegraph.co.uk
