Is it normal to have something added to the bill in a restaurant in Italy?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 28 Jul, 2023
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You did get ripped off in Rome, Not sure in Milan.
The practice of adding a fee for every person at the table on top of any food ordered is old, but a regional law of Latium (Lazio), which includes the city of Rome, forbade it in 2006. Unfortunately violations are widespread, particularly downtown.
I’m not sure whether the Milan area has a similar regulation and what it does say.
It’s common practice in Italy. It’s called “coperto” (cover charge). Even though it’s sometimes phrased as “pane e coperto” (bread and cover charge) but even if you don’t touch the bread you are still required to pay for it. It is usually stated somewhere on the menu, although in some cases not very prominently.
So this does not only happen to tourists. To be fair, traditionally in Italy tips are not expected unless the customer is particularly happy with the service. Most of the time only small change is left as tip (as opposed to the 15/20% expected tips in some other countries).
My feeling is that, over time, cover charges are slowly starting to disappear, especially in informal restaurants (pizzerie, etc.).
In your individual case, this could of course have been a ripoff.
However, historically, it has been quite common practice, particularly but not only, in south western Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal), to charge a small fee for sitting down at a restaurant.
In essence, you could argue this is to cover, say, the bread and butter you receive but did not ask for, but it’s simply a cover charge. It’s more likely this is a leftover from a time when tipping was less common while sitting down at a restaurant means not being able to ‘sell’ the same seat to another person for the time the seat is occupied.
There’s a brief but adequate explanation available near the bottom of this Wikipedia page.
Similarly, still, many southern European cafes will charge you a supplement for your drinks and food when you choose to sit down, as opposed to standing at the bar.
It is common practice in Italy to charge for the dish on top of the dinner.
It is common practice in Portugal to charge for water, bread, olives on top of the dinner.
It is common practice in the USA to charge for service and taxes on top of the dinner.
Well yes, probably, but it can be defended as a cultural thing.
I’ve seen places in Poland charge a per person cost for “sauces” too, something like $2.50 a head (regardless of whether or not you’ve actually used any of course!). In that case my waiter’s defence sounds similar to the your’s.. “It’s standard and it’s listed in the menu”. He was right too, it was in the menu… down the bottom on page 12. But I guess that’s warning enough.
Any business where most of their customers are tourists will be tempted to use tactics like this. Once you figure it out it’s too late and you were probably never going to be a repeat customer anyway so they lose very little. (That’s my theory at least.)
Caveat emptor!
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