Rome restaurant pays price after tourist rip-off
 

A restaurant in Rome which presented a Japanese tourist with a bill for nearly 700 euros (980 dollars) after a meal with his fiancee has been closed down by the authorities, Il Messaggero daily reported on Thursday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090702...20090702150544

Wirelessly posted (Palm TX: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; PalmSource/Palm-D050; Blazer/4.3) 16;320x448)

Bravo to the Authorities.,,,

Disgusting
 

I dont like Italy. When I was there in 2000, a side street vendor charged me 20 euro (equivalent) for a sandwich. It was stale bread too.. What a ripoff.

This story of the Japanese tourist couple - they had only pasta, water and a bottle of wine.. getting ripped off just shows how dishonest some people can get.

When my Japanese friend went to Rome a few years back she was also ripped off. She had ordered something for 5euros only, but they charged her 20. When she complained, they reduced it to 10... Sick!

I can guarantee you, that stiffing tourists is not the norm in Italy. There are bad apples in every group. In over 5 years in Italy, I've never been stiffed or taken advantage of for not being Italian.

You've been lucky ... count your blessings! :)

True enough that you get good and bad everywhere ... but this is more prevalent in Rome and maybe Napoli rather than up north.

The restaurant was not closed for overcharging the tourists, it was closed for health violations. No doubt the restaurant behaved badly but one of the things of the couple ordered was 180 euro bottle of champagne.

As to the person who was charged 20 euro for a sandwich, you were certainly under no obligation to purchase this sandwich unless you ate it before asking the price. Mobile food carts near tourists sights always sell items at a huge markup. The buyer needs to accept some amount of responsibility.

Absolutely agree. I was in Paris last weekend. I ate a sandwich with bottled water at an outdoor cafe on the Champs-Elysees. For myself and my companion, who ate the exact same thing, we paid 25 euros. Practically highway robbery! But it was the view we were paying for. Nothing special about the sandwiches.

Thanks, but no need to count any blessings here. Italians in the north are typically not so friendly. Italians in the south are extremely friendly. I live in the north, yes. But, I've travelled throughout all of Italy and no one has ever stiffed me. I've never seen anyone get stiffed. I know a very large amount of ex-pats here and none of them have ever been stiffed. I have spent a great deal of time in Rome and this is never an issue. Naples, again, never an issue. Just gotta be careful for pickpockets, that's all. Italians often live in fear of the police, especially the Guardia di Finanza. Not because the police go around beating people up, just that they can create alot of problems for a businessperson if they've been reported to be unethical. I can guarantee you with almost certainty, this restaurant did not make a fiscal receipt (una ricevuta fiscale) with the 980 euros total on it. This would've been a tax of somewhere north of 150 euros. They just gave them a handwritten receipt without IVA on it. This would've meant that when the authorities arrived, they would've had more than just health concerns.

One would think that Venetian restaurant proprietors take pride in dishing out inedible, overpriced nosh on their "menu turistico". ;)

On the other hand, my ex-GF from Padova once explained to me that the restaurant owners quickly lose interest in customers who only want meals consisting of meat and potatos.

Well, Venice is quite expensive to live in/own a business, so prices are undoubtedly high. Just the cost of a small apartment alone can be more than an apartment in Manhattan. And given the extremely small area of Venice, there is no room to grow, so costs only go up and up.

As for the quality of food in Venice, you just have to know where to go. Inevitably, places near Piazza San Marco and the Rialto can have some lower standards. Afterall, some Italians have the idea that the daily American diet consists of three meals made at McDonalds. Not exactly gourmet cuisine.

It is a typically Venetian tradition to eat cicchetti anytime in the late afternoon with a few spritzes with aperol. The cost of these is low and the quality is usually very high and they are made fresh every afternoon. This is a great way to have an inexpensive snack in the afternoon.

Remember, Italian cooking isn't about complicated sauces and cooking styles. It's about fresh, organic, whole foods that are grilled or roasted with a focus on fresh herbs and olive oil. Pasta is mainly eaten at lunchtime, but can also be found at dinner as a first course. There are basically 5 sauces: arrabiato (spicy), ragù (meat sauce with tomatoes), pomodoro (just tomatoes with fresh herbs), pesto (fresh basil, garlic, pine nuts, and olive oil made into a paste), and carbonara (pancetta, pecorino or parmesan cheese, egg yolk, and pepper). Yes, there are many more ways to prepare pasta, but these are the basic and main dressings for pasta. The idea of complicated, hard to prepare sauces that must bubble on the stove for hours is utter nonsense. Yes, ragù can be slow-simmered, but this is not necessary to achieve a good ragù.

Food in the north of Italy is vastly different than food in the south. It is important to note that 80% of Americans of Italian ancestry come from the south. So, it is quite common that most "authentic" Italian restaurants in the US serve southern Italian food. Some favorite dishes we find in America simply do not exist in the north or are very difficult to find. Most Americans wouldn't know about Baccalà vicentina, Bigoli con anatra, Fegato alla veneziana, but you would be hard-pressed to find a northeastern Italian who hasn't eaten these. Northern Italian lasagna usually has just 2 small layers of pasta with ragù and ricotta inbetween then covered with bechamel sauce. A Napolitano or Calabrian cook would shudder at the thought of putting bechamel on top of a lasagna, and it must be made several layers taller, prepared one day in advance, and put in the refrigerator to mix the flavors together. Italian cuisine is extremely varied and differs from region to region, province to province. Even in my province, there are typical dishes or foods that are not found in the province next door.

If you want recommendations for good quality eating in and around the Venice area (even Mestre or Padova), don't hesitate to send me a PM. I am a foodie and have a waistline to prove it! :D

^ Well said and I couldn't agree more.

Let me also add that a tourist visiting almost any big city in the world might (a) be intentionally overcharged by a restaurant, hotel, car service, etc... and (b) get a bad meal. The idea that this is somehow exclusive to Italy is absurd.

I think you are confusing "value" and "price." Even street vendors list the cost of products. Your sandwich may not have been "worth" 20EU but the price is the price.

"Inevitably, places near Piazza San Marco and the Rialto can have some lower standards."

maybe rule of thumb, but there are a number of quite good reasonably priced restaurants within a few blocks of those sites. also, with the exception of the ever shrinking blue collar neighborhoods, almost everyplace in Venice is a tourist site.

in my many visits to venice as an obvious tourist, i have only received 1 overbilling. was a beauty. wife and i had a 150000£ lunch, and were billed 1500000£. do not know what would have happened if not caught at the restaurant.

in my experience, each community has a different "style" of cooking and different foodstuffs. much is due to the demand for "fresh" foodstuffs.
a tuscan restaurant in venice is considered "foreign", as is the
Adriatic restaurant in bologna.

the restaurant offerings in Parma, Modena, bologna, and ferrara are quite different, and they are all in a 50km radius. some are inexplicably strange. Gattinara(about 50miles NW of Milan) serves piaia.

The whole point is to avoid places with a "menu turistico." When we travel -- anywhere -- we seek out local's places and are rarely disappointed and never ripped off.

Rome
 

I feel very little sympathy here.. Haha.. LOL.. It's OK. This was back in 2000. I was on my first ever overseas trip. I was young, naive and travelling with a whole bunch of Aussies on a contiki Tour. It was outside the Vatican. We asked the guy like 5 times how much it was.. He never told us until the sandwich was in our hands. You see, when you travel for the first time, you never expect the side street vendor to rip you off like that. Here in Toronto, all the hotdog vendors have prices on their carts. That sandwich guy didnt. You want to know why? It's so he can rip people off.. That's why, I would tell everyone to stay away from these ripoff artists... Oh one more thing, back then it was the lira... so it took us a while to figure out how much we paid. LOL. After all, we had already went to UK, Netherlands, Germany, Austria before getting to Rome...

Ah, this makes more sense. You purchased from an unlicensed vendor. Unfortunately this happens but to then dismiss an entire COUNTRY as a result, that's really unfortunate.