Featured Image Credit: frantic00/Getty Images
Topics: Restaurants and bars
Rachael Davis
Holiday expenses are mostly taken up by flights and hotels, but let’s not forget how easily you can spend a fortune on food, too.
In some of the biggest tourism hotspots, some eateries will use the demand to their advantage with heightened prices and spurious additional charges, catching some off-guard.
You could argue you’re getting what’s coming to you if you make a beeline for the tourist hotspots and sit down for a meal there, but even the most high-and-mighty among us would have to admit that this €2 charge at an Italian restaurant was pushing the envelope for mugging people off.
Bar Pace, a bar in Gera Lario off the northern shore of Lake Como, Italy, has received a TripAdvisor review highlighting the cheeky charge.
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Customer reviews are a mixed bag, to say the least. Some will have genuine gripes about the service, ambience, or quality, while others might criticise an establishment for being ‘too hot’ in the height of a Mediterranean summer, or for being unforgivably short on English Breakfast tea.
This one seems fair enough. At the bar, which serves coffee, cocktails, salads, wraps and sandwiches, some customers visited for a Coca-Cola, a sparkling water, an espresso and a vegetarian toastie with a side of chips.
The sandwich was the sticking point. At €7.50 (£6.46) it was relatively reasonable, but on top of that was an additional €2 (£1.72) charge for cutting the sandwich in half.
If slicing a sandwich in half can net you £1.72, we’re all in the wrong job. As labour to income ratios go, it’s pretty special.
The receipt lists the charge as ‘diviso da meta’ in Italian, or ‘divided in half’ in English, but the romance language did little to calm the charge’s sting.
"There were two of us and we asked for a toasted sandwich to share at the table. We have to pay because the toast was cut in half?” said the reviewer on TripAdvisor.
"This has never happened to me in any of the places I have visited in the world."
As lunches go, it wasn’t a complete outrage at €15.70 (£13.52), and the customer’s complaint prompted the bar’s owner to dish out at a counter to the Italian media.
“We had to use two plates instead of one and the time to wash them is doubled, and then two placemats," said Cristina Biacchi, owner of Bar Pace.
“It wasn’t a simple toasted sandwich, there were also French fries inside. It took us time to cut it in two.”
Sorry Cristina, but that wasn't the most compelling argument.