Look, we all know that eating and drinking out at tourist attractions typically costs more. But occasionally, even a small extra can push us over the edge. In order to enjoy a scoop of ice cream with her spouse while visiting Italy, one traveler was charged an extra price for an extra spoon.
Late in August, a visitor gave the northern Italian gelateria Caffè Gelateria Serafini a negative, one-star TripAdvisor review. Not because the lady discovered a hair in her scoop or because the scoop was subpar. It was the fact that they requested an extra dining utensil, which resulted in the price being $1 higher than they had anticipated.
Bring your own forks, knives, and spoons! If you need an extra, they charge you $1,” the tourist reported. “You have to rent an extra spoon for $1 if you go as a couple and want to share a dessert.”
There have been other recent reviews that have criticized the surcharge as well.
Another irate customer complained about “…charging 1 euro for an additional teaspoon… and if I drop my fork, do I pay extra to have another one, or is it included in the surcharge.”
Sharing ice cream bowls for an additional fee is ludicrous. It’s acceptable to set the rules you want in your own home, but they will be assessed by “visitors” once you have demonstrated the goodness of your decisions, said another. For further proof, some reviews even included images of their receipts. None of the publicly available comments on the user-generated service have received a response from the eatery.
With these ostensibly unnecessary fees, it seems Italian restaurants are having a field day in 2023. A couple said they were charged an extra two euros by a restaurant in Lake Como because they requested that their sandwich be split in half, according to a New York Post article from August.
Travelers said on their one-star TripAdvisor rating, “Unbelievable but true,” The eatery, Bar Pace in Gera Lario, did, however, defend itself this time, telling the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, “Additional demands have a cost… We were forced to use two dishes in place of one, which increased the amount of time it took to wash them. It wasn’t just a plain toasted sandwich; within were French fries. We needed some time to divide it in half.
Hey, at least none of these individuals were unknowingly charged about $1,000 for crab.
