Now that’s the tip of a lifetime.
A wealthy Asian-art collector more than took care of his favorite waitresses at an Upper East Side steak house when he died — leaving each a $50,000 tip in his will.
Robert “King of Ming” Ellsworth, 85, apparently didn’t know the last names of the two servers at Donohue’s Steak House, referring to them in the will as “Maureen at Donohue’s” and “Maureen-at-Donohue’s Niece Maureen.”
“I was shocked,’’ said one of the waitresses, Maureen Donohue-Peters, 53, who was bequeathed the tip with niece Maureen Barrie, 28.
“I just couldn’t believe it. I didn’t expect anything.”
Ellsworth, worth an estimated $200 million when he died in August, had been a regular at the joint for decades, she said.
“Out of eight meals, he ate seven here. We were his dining room,” Donohue-Peters said.
Ellsworth would usually show up with his personal assistant for lunch and order a grilled cheese with bacon, workers said. He would return with a friend or two for a sirloin steak for dinner.
He would wash down his meals with a Jim Beam bourbon.
“He would always tip 20 percent. He never even looked at the bill” and just told servers to tack it on, said worker Juan Carlos Padiloa.
Ellsworth’s lunch bill for two would be around $60 to $80, not including tip, the worker said.
For a dinner for two, his bill would typically be around $125. Four people could run up to $220.
Founded by Donohue-Peters’ father, the eatery on Lexington Avenue near East 64th Street has served the likes of Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Hanks and Matt Lauer.
Still, Donohue-Peters said Ellsworth “was more than just a customer to me.”
“I had known him for 53 years — my entire life,” she said.
Barrie, her niece, said the posthumous gratuity shocked her, too.
“He was a wonderful man and a dear friend,” Barrie said.
Ellsworth, called the world’s wealthiest Asian-art collector, never graduated high school but earned the moniker “King of Ming” through an expertise in Ming dynasty furniture.
His 20-room Fifth Avenue apartment was full of treasures, including a rug from the emperor’s quarters in Beijing’s Forbidden Palace.
Much of the childless Manhattan native’s fortune is going to his live-in chef and friend of more than 40 years, Masahiro Hashiguchi.
Hashiguchi was left $10 million, in addition to jewelry, furniture, real estate, crystal and a dog.
The rest will be divvied up among Ellsworth’s siblings, nieces, nephews and godchildren, as well as household staff and friends, who were each given $100,000.
Some of his artifacts are bound for museums and universities, including the Met, New York University, Harvard and Yale.
Ellsworth died Aug. 3 as the result of a fall, according to his obituary in The New York Times.