We have just returned from a weeks vacation, I hope to write a trip report but not sure if that will happen. This was our 20th year of visiting together with at least 1 trip per year. Several regulars have encouraged us to share our experiences but as you can see from the number of posts this isn’t likely.
I do feel compelled to report on our visit to So French in Simpson Bay, the restaurant had glowing reports on Trip Advisor, that should have been a tip off right there, but it fit our criteria for a first night visit, this trip we were staying on Simpson Bay, wanted a restaurant that was minutes away, on the water and would provide a great start to our trip and we like to try new restaurants.
We were aware of a previous report regarding a special tax of 15% being added to their bill, we had even commented on this post, we thought we would try it anyhow because we had made reservations and it sounded interesting. It is a long day for us, getting up at 330AM, leaving for JFK at 4Am, with the Nor’easter approaching on the morning of 12/09, we did arrive on time, so we arrived at the restaurant on time, got the water view table we requested and found it very pleasant, great view, very good service, and decent food but expensive for the quality. Our dinner total was 2 glasses of champagne, 2 glasses of wine, I had the frog legs special and the sliced beef in mushroom sauce, both pretty good, Susan had the scallop appetizer and the Turbot special, the scallops were overcooked and the turbot was pretty good. We were tired and we are not big dessert eaters, so we requested our bill.
This is where it went downhill in a hurry, the waiter arrives with our “E-Bill”, a not so smart phone with some kind of app that displays out itemized bill, so nothing printed, you need to enlarge the screen to see it clearly, the total was around $160 something and then a 15% “tax” was added bring the total to $180 something, we knew based on trusted input from several residents and our own experience that there is no “tax” of 15%. I am assuming, if you charged your bill, the receipt would read a total of $180 something and a line for a tip. We paid cash, did not want to get involved regarding what this tax was, so we paid the total and even a few dollars more, just treating the tax as the tip, probably resulting in a tip of around 17% or so, sorry to be so long winded, but we really could come up with no explanation other than an obvious attempt to get a double tip.
We probably would have left this restaurant on our OK to return list, but this tax quickly changed that. We will obviously not return and wanted others to carefully check their bill.