According to the copy of the restaurant bill posted on the Internet, the four customers ate: four servings of abalone with list price of 8,800 yuan each; four orders of braised truffles/shark fin soup with list price of 13,888 yuan each; four orders of South African bird's nest soup with wild honey at 9,860 each; 1980 vintage Lafitte red wine; 50-year-vintage Maotai... These items alone already amounted to more than 180,000 yuan. There were also some other miscellaneous items such as beef with pepper, braised tofu, etc which were offered for 0 yuan. The customer signed the bill for the round sum of 200,000 yuan.

Could this be real? Many netizens have their doubts, because they think that this is yet another promotional gimmick.

From the telephone number listed on the bill, our reporter contacted the restaurant and spoke to the manager named Yang.

Manager Yang confirmed that this was true. He told the reporter what happened: "There were four customers who showed up for lunch. They ate so late that the restaurant workers had to work overtime. They drank a lot. For some reason, they got into an argument with the servers. The attitude of patrons is that if you don't think that we can afford it, we will deliberately make it difficult for you. So this customer had two carloads of one yuan notes delivered to pay the bill. He wanted to cause us grief [because we would need to count the notes, one at a time]."

This restaurant specialises in serving bird's nest, abalone and shark fin, with an average expenditure of 1,500 to 2,000 yuan per capita. The patrons are mostly coal mine owners, company bosses, etc. Apart from the food and wine, the restaurant also imposes a 10% service charge. They provide side dishes and fruits for free.

Is this a promotional gimmick by this restaurant? Our reporter tried hard but was unable to reach this "most awesome restaurant customer ever".

The post was originally published on EastSouthWestNorth in June 2010.