Social media went into a little frenzy of its own when Mert Turkmen, a Dubai restaurateur shared a screenshot of a bill from his restaurant Gal from New Year’s Eve. It was a whopping 620,926.61 AED for 21 guests. Even if the decimal points were mistakenly placed, making it 60k AED – this is beyond what any of us ‘regular people’ can afford. The big question on everyone’s minds : Is this a PR stunt? Is the New Year’s Eve bill at Gal real?
The NYE Bill
It went viral.
Lovin Dubai of course picked the news up and shared it on their platform – assuming that Mr. Turkmen himself owned the bill. Hundreds of comments followed – mostly outraged residents criticising that this amount could be spent in one night. Very amusing and entertaining to read if you have nothing else better to do on a Tuesday night.
Dubai Problems had his say.
If you do a quick Google, you would see numerous articles written by various other news media sites in the UAE as well as overseas.
You’ll read it on Khaleej Times, Arabian Business.
It went viral.
We reached out to Gal.
As we had previously written for Gal, we reached out to Can Holat – Q Food & Beverage’s Marketing Manager. Can also takes care of Gal, Huqqabaz, and Urla amongst other upscale restaurants in Dubai.
Can confirmed that this was in fact real, and was a bill owned by one of Gal’s regular guests. Mr Turkmen was simply resharing it on his social media. Hint : the shared bill was a Reprint, and is mentioned clearly on the photo at 3:54pm the next day.
We were sceptical, to say the least. Who spends that amount of money in one evening?! We asked for a copy of the New Year’s Eve set menu to understand what 15000AED per head outdoors at Gal gets you. Not to forget that one person who sat indoors for half the price at 7500 AED (poor guy).
There’s beluga caviar as amuse bouche, 24 karat gold burrata, wagyu beef carpaccio with truffle to start. Main course was one of 3 – beef rossini, canadian lobster with cavair, and culurgiones with truffle.
What surprised us was the NYE package included free-flow drinks for the entire evening.
Of course, there was no champagne or top shelf drinks in the NYE set menu package – which made up the other 300k AED of the bill. We did receive a copy of their NYE drinks menu – and the prices did correlate with the bill. So for those of you who are speculating – yes, gold shisha is 1,500 AED, a Don Julio 1942 Magnum is 20,000 AED a bottle. And yes, a bottle of Dom Perignon Rose is 175k AED.
Our thoughts
I think it will be safe to keep our personal opinions to ourselves, ha ha ha.
For those who are keen to check out the place – Gal is pretty stunning as a venue itself. We have been there with the family, and they do do a family lunch set menu in the weekends, and guess what? It’s not 15000 AED per person 🙂
Have a look at the Gal Lunch Set Menu here.
And sorry – no, it is not in the Entertainer 😀
So – what do YOU think? Is the New Year’s Eve bill at Gal Downtown Dubai real? Or is it a PR stunt? 🙂
In case you wanted to see how the place looks like :
- Gal Dubai
- Gal’s website
- Downtown Dubai