Diner hit with £2,366 bill for bottle of wine, thinking it was £23.60

Man Charged $3,750 for Wine He Thought Cost $37.50

A businessman was forced to spend $3,750 (£2,366) on a bottle of red wine at a restaurant in Atlantic City, New Jersey, when he ordered it thinking it was $37.50 (£23.60).

Joe Lentini was having dinner at Bobby Flay Steak in the Borgata Hotel and Casino when the novice wine-drinker asked the waitress for a recommendation, the Huffington Post reports.

"I asked the waitress if she could recommend something decent because I don't have experience with wine," Lentini said.

"She pointed to a bottle on the menu. I didn't have my glasses. I asked how much and she said, 'Thirty-seven fifty.'"

The bottle of wine was a Screaming Eagle, Oakville 2011, which Lentini said "was OK" but "wasn't great. It wasn't terrible. It was fine."

According to the New York Post, Lentini and his two fellow diners disputed the bill and the restaurant dropped the price to $2,200 (£1,388).

He said he never would have ordered a bottle of wine that expensive but a hotel spokesman said there was "no misunderstanding regarding the selection".

Last year, a tourist spent a night in jail after dining at a posh steakhouse in New York and forgetting his wallet to pay the $208 (£130) bill.

Graziano Graziussi, a 43-year-old lawyer from Naples, offered to leave his iPhone with the restaurant while he fetched his wallet, but management at Smith and Wollensky had him arrested and charged with theft.

He reportedly begged workers to let him get the money from the apartment where he was staying, but they were unsympathetic.

"I found it completely unreasonable to call the police when I was coming up with possible solutions," he told The New York Post.

"I wasn't going to run away. I was there, I had just forgotten my wallet."