HOW $79 pp BECAME A $380 BILL

On Dec 31, three of us went to Patoug restaurant in Bayside, Queens. The restaurant used to be a treif restaurant and they went glatt kosher. The restaurant is authentically a Persian restaurant. In fact, when they have entertainers, they never speak a word in English!

On New Year’s Eve, as it turns out, they had a special, fixed price dinner. For $79 per person, you got appetizers, dinner, dessert, tea, champagne and the musical entertainment.

There were two singers. The warm up singer sang for well over an hour, and he was quite good. We didn’t understand a word, but the music was nice. The headliner came on after midnight and sang for about 40 minutes. Then the warm up guy came back and sang for quite some time (we left after a while as it was quite late). The food was quite tasty. All of it was very good and we all enjoyed our dinners. The wait staff was a tad overly attentive, stopping by every six minutes or so to ask if everything was all right. Water refill service and appetizer refills were brought quickly and with a big smile.

So how did $79 per person become a total bill of $380?

Dinner for three was $237. Bottled water was $8. One diet soda was $4. A bottle of Barkan Shiraz was a whopping $50! Here’s the catch, however. The wine list had no prices listed. We rather foolishly figured that the farily standard $35 bottle charge would apply. When we saw the $50 charge on the bill, we asked if that was the special New Year’s Eve price. We were told that is the every day price. That was a bit of a shocker!

The total at the table was $299. Add the tax and a mandatory 15% gratuity added to the bill and it came to $380.

Yes, we had a good time. Yes, the food was really good. The music was good. The singers were good (not great, but enjoyable). But the total tab was a bit on the high side, we felt.

So what did we eat? Our appetizers (part of the dinner package and totally their choice) included:

SAMBUSEH: crispy dumplings filled with veggies, chic peas and seasonings.

EGG SALAD: yup, egg salad Persian style. Seemed like any other egg salad but it was tasty.

HUMMUS: quite good actually.

MIRZA GHASEMI : Baked eggplant with tomato sauce & garlic seasoning.

PITA TRIANGLES: Just what it sounds like- little cut up pieces of pita. For dinner, we each had TIKKEH KABOB: char broiled cubes of steak meat served with a grilled green pepper and a grilled tomato. One of us had chips, one had green rice, and the other had Israeli salad. The green rice (rice and dill) was quite tasty. Our Israeli salad was a tad acidic, giving it a nice bite!

The champagne was Star of Abraham brand. We are sure that you have never heard of it, right? To make it even better, the champagen was served in dinky, plastic champagne cups.

So, would we go there again? Probably. The food was quite good. Next time, however, we will skip the wine and the bottle water- NYC tap water will suffice. And as they charge for normally for each appetizer, we will definitely skip the egg salad!

You can find Patoug at www.patoug.com