What you’re referring to is not even something you’d find on the regular menu of a particularly extravagant Strip restaurant, but a one-time splurge during the Consumer Electronics Show and which took place at Prime Steakhouse at Bellagio. The heavy spender was Vice Media CEO Shane Smith, who was feeling particularly expansive after a big win (alleged to be in the neighborhood of $100,000) at the blackjack tables. Officially, the number of guests at Smith’s gourmet spree was 12, although anonymous sources place the total closer to 25 (one source puts it at 30), which makes the expenditure seem at least a bit less extravagant.
What drove the price so high? According to a dispatch by Las Vegas Review-Journal gossip columnist Norm Clarke, six bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti 2006 were purchased at $40,000 per bottle, along with Cristal Champagne and "a couple other bottles." Do the math and you’ve got $275,000 spent on liquor alone. That still requires a food outlay of at least $1,000 a person and, according to CNBC, "the most expensive food item on the menu at the … Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant, is a 28-ounce bone-in rib eye for $85."
Unless one includes a hefty gratuity, that $25,000 food tab perhaps ought to be taken with a grain of salt. Perhaps MGM Resorts International rounded up the number to impress the press (and they certainly succeeded.) Or, as an AOL.com column put it, for $300,000, "You could get 3,529 28-ounce bone in rib-eyes, 9,375 orders of seared foie gras, 12,500 orders of hamachi sashimi, or for the veggie lover, 17,647 plates of Caesar salad." But seriously, if you ordered the rib eye, two sides, a salad, soup and two appetizers, you’d have "only" spent $320 which, multiplied by 30, gets you to a $9,600 for your entire group. We rest our case.
(We asked MGM for specifics of the feast and spokeswoman Yvette Monet replied, "I’d be divulging guest information, so I apologize, my hands are tied and I can confirm nothing.")
