LEWISTON — After a diner finished his meal at Legends Sports Bar & Grill on Saturday night, he quietly asked a server to add all of the open tabs in the restaurant to his bill — then left a $1,000 tip, further stunning the staff.

He slipped out before other diners could thank him.

“In fact, they won’t even tell me who he is,” Legends owner Melinda Small said Tuesday. “They said, ‘We made a promise that we would not share his identity because he asked to remain anonymous.’ I’m like, ‘I’m the owner,’ and they’re, ‘Nope, we made a promise.'”

Saturday was a stormy but bustling night, she said. The man was having dinner with one other person and their bill came to about $50 when he made the unusual request to server Taylor Ryan.

“Taylor repeated the request to make sure she understood it correctly because we were definitely busy,” Small said.

Picking up everyone else’s bills came to a little over $1,000, and he left the $1,000 tip on top of that. The three servers on the floor thanked him.

“They were just private and humble — that’s the word that came to my mind as I heard the story,” Small said. “Somehow in life they had been blessed, possibly, by very hard work and they just wanted to share that humbly with others.”

After the couple left, the servers went around to the other tables to let customers know that their bills were all set.

“Of course, everybody was pretty excited and the holiday cheer was very evident,” she said.

Ryan and the others pretty quickly decided to share the tip with all of the crew working that night. In her nine years owning the restaurant, Small said she hasn’t had a work team come together like this crew, always having each others’ backs.

“It’s so wonderful, it’s just a blessing. It’s my holiday blessing,” she said.

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