Nello Balan Strikes Again
The Post reports that Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire close to sealing a deal to buy the Nets, stopped off at Nello's on Wednesday and dropped $19,000 on lunch. What did he spend all that cash on? Miraculously, a crack reporter at the paper managed to obtain the bill:
$825 for three orders of truffle tagliolini
$600 for four orders of truffle carpaccio
$210 for three orders of veal chops with mushrooms
$72 for six large waters
$15 for a bowl of chicken soup
$5,000 for a bottle of vintage 1998 Chateau Petrus
$3,600 for two bottles of 2002 Montrachet Latour
$3,750 in tips
Of course, Nello Balan, the restaurant's bleached-blond owner and one of the city's most relentless publicity seekers, had absolutely nothing to do with revealing any of these details:
Balan declined to disclose Prokhorov's exact tab. But a copy of the receipt obtained by The Post showed it totaled $15,007.87.
Of course he declined! Just because he summons the paparazzi to the restaurant every time a celebrity turns up within a three-block radius and has resorted to some rather questionable tactics in the past to generate press, doesn't mean he'd stoop to something like that. He has a 700 years of nobility at stake!
