Always check your credit card receipt before adding a tip and signing it. That’s my advice after dining at Insieme at The Michelangelo Hotel earlier this month while checking out the NYC food scene.
But first, let me describe our delicious meal by Insieme’s chef — Craft veteran — Marco Canora.
We each started with a half order ($16) of pasta or risotto – one was more delicious than the next. A simple linguitini with cracked black pepper and grated aged pecorino, spinach lasagne verde with meat ragu and bechamel sauce, Carnaroli rice risotto with zucchini squash blossoms and basil and — my favorite — duck ravioli with celery, red endive and lovage. A crisp Santi Soave Classico Monteforte ($48) accompanied these so well.
Next, I indulged in tender slices of perfectly cooked Bev Eggleson’s roasted pork loin ($30) and pork sausage with beans in a rosemary infused broth. Frank Bruni referred to this small-scale, ethically raised pork as “outrageously fine swine.” It was outrageously tender and delicious.
Three others had the succulent diver scallops that were cooked just right and served with sweet corn, pancetta, chanterelles, tomatoes and tarragon ($29). The Valpolicella Superiore Mara Vino di Ripasso 2006 worked well the both.
I asked those at the table what they thought of our food. In response Gordon succinctly and perfectly described it as it’s “more flavor and ingredients, than style and presentation.”
We ended with a flavorful trio of apricot-passion fruit, blueberry and honeydew-mint sorbetto ($11) and roasted peach halves with vanilla gelato ($10).
All was perfection until we got our credit card receipts to sign. Like a normal restaurant one, each had a subtotal and a blank line awaiting the tip. I had looked at the bill and mentally divided it by 6 to calculate my portion, but the receipt I was looking at was about 20 percent higher than my computation.
“I didn’t realize they would add in the tip…”
No one else did either as they were about to fill in the blank by adding 20 percent more.
Instead, we each left the tip line blank (actually putting an x through it so it wouldn’t be tampered with..), repeated the subtotal as the total. I then wrote on my comment card that it would have been nice to let diners know you added a 20 percent tip!
Standing in front of the restaurant saying out goodbyes, we were approached by management… Why didn’t we leave any tip?, they inquired. Was something wrong?
We explained the 20 percent already added it, they purported to be surprised saying it was never done and they apologized profusely.
As I said, always check your bill.
– bonnie
777 Seventh Avenue
(51st Street)
at The Michelangelo Hotel
New York, New York 10019
Phone 212 582 1310
www.restaurantinsieme.com
Reading your Tidbite, I am astounded that a restaurant would add an undisclosed 20% to a bill on its own — isn’t a clearly stated 15% to 17% the usual gratuity add-on for larger groups — and then question why no tip was left! That’s just about the definition of chutspah. It was very gracious of you to write/speak well of the restaurant’s food in that situation.