Tourist says she accidentally ordered £1,890 cocktail in five-star London hotel which she thought cost £18.90

Evening Standard

An Irish woman who was staying at a five-star hotel in London said she accidentally ordered a £1890 cocktail thinking it was £18.90.Mum and businesswoman Lynsey Bennett was visiting the capital over New Years and had ordered the drink at the bar with her husband.

Transcript

00:00 So when I discovered the cocktail I had ordered was a two thousand pounds

00:04 I showed my husband the receipt and he was furious at me

00:09 In today's episode of is someone on the internet lying to you

00:13 You may have seen this this video of a lady who says that she went to a cocktail bar in five-star hotel in London

00:19 Paid for drink that was listed as one eight nine zero and thought she was getting a drink for under twenty quid

00:24 Turns out she gets billed for two grand

00:27 Knowing this video she says that she really really did apologize as her husband storms out and then she explains to the bar manager

00:33 And they let her off without fee and in the end, it's all happy families

00:36 But my god, I'm always gonna make sure that there's a full stop there next time

00:40 Now because I look after food and drink at the evening standard. I have had questions all day about is this possibly true?

00:46 So I can't say yes or no definitively, but what I can tell you is a few things

00:51 first of all

00:53 The drink has crystal which is champagne that got very famous in the 90s because a lot of rappers start hiking up particularly Jay-z

01:00 He was associated with the brand that bottle retails for 300 pounds

01:03 Then it has 30 year old cognac in there. So that's gonna start at

01:08 180 for not very good stuff and that could get up into the thousands quite easily couple thousand three thousand

01:14 So if you see that on the menu, you probably already know that this is not going to be a cheap drink

01:20 However, she also says well, I don't like a whiskey based cocktail

01:23 Cognac is brandy. So the story is already not really adding up then we get the manager says oh, it's all fine

01:31 We just had to fire the guy and then turns out to be a joke and he says but we did have to give him

01:36 Some training because this has happened before

01:38 There's no way that's happened before it might have happened once and then that employee will get training

01:44 But there's no way it's allowed to happen twice. It's just too much money for a hotel to lose

01:49 Secondly where on earth could this have happened?

01:51 So there's two places that seem obvious for this first is a restaurant in the Savoy Hotel called

01:57 1890 it's Gordon Ramsay restaurant and they sell a lot of high-end drinks a lot of high-end wine

02:02 This is actually one of the best hotels in London for its seller

02:05 So I asked 1890 to sell a drink this expensive

02:09 Now we don't that's not us

02:12 So that's first of all that discounts that place and secondly, you know the menu everything is too full to five

02:17 They don't list drinks at 1450

02:20 1890 no high-end hotel in London lists drinks. That's not around number anymore

02:25 It doesn't look elegant on the menu that makes them look like cutting corners

02:28 It's a bit like you can go to five-star hotel and expect there to be something that was 99p

02:33 You'd expect to pay the full price. So then I thought well the Savoy's American bar

02:37 It's also really famous for high-end drinks. Ask the bartender there. No not us

02:42 We don't sell a drink that expensive even with our vintage spirits

02:45 So then you're looking where else sells vintage spirits because they're way more expensive

02:50 So this guy from Salvatore and Calabrese and he's famous for them. So at the moment he's at the Corinthia Hotel

02:55 No, those drinks are 300 pounds fine. Where did he work for Donovan bar?

03:00 They have a thousand pound cocktail and they have five and half thousand pound cocktail. It can't be them

03:05 They don't list a drink at that price and it's worth pointing out with all of these places

03:09 They only ever list the pound sign and the the whole number so you will see on that list

03:15 It goes let's say two five then they got a drink at 50 quid five zero

03:20 Thousand say one zero zero zero. There's no full stops

03:24 Decimal places none of that

03:27 So then I went through every five-star hotel. I'm just gonna cut the story short

03:30 Nowhere in London sells a drink at that price. I cannot say that New Year's Eve

03:35 It didn't happen. What I can say is she thought she was drinking whiskey when it was brandy

03:40 No one gets trained twice for a mistake like that and nowhere in London

03:45 I can find a drink like that. So to me on today's answer for is someone lying to you on the internet

03:50 probably

03:53 Because people like attention

03:55 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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