Charlotte Foster
Travel Trouble

"Unbelievable but true": Tourist outraged over shocking restaurant fee

A tourist in Italy has been hit with a shocking fee from an upscale eatery after he asked for his sandwich to be cut in half. 

The anonymous man was travelling in Italy's picturesque Lake Como region, and stopped in at Bar Pace in Gera Lario, at the lake’s northern end, for a vegetarian sandwich and fries for lunch. 

Travelling with a friend, the man asked for the meal to be cut in half so they could share.

After polishing off their lunch, the traveller was shocked when he was given the bill, noticing a charge he had never seen before. 

The man paid without arguing, but later took to TripAdvisor to leave a negative review. 

“Unbelievable but true,” the man captioned a photo of the receipt on TripAdvisor.

The receipt lists the sandwich for €7.50 ($12.60), Coca Cola for €3.50 ($5.90), water for €1.50 ($2.50) and espresso for €1.20 ($2), along with the debated “diviso da meta”, or “cutting in half” fee, amounting to 2 euros, or $3.40.

The confused customer gave the restaurant one star on TripAdvisor, far below the average of four and a half stars, based on over 100 reviews.

After the review garnered a lot of unexpected attention, the restaurant's owner defended the fee to a local news outlet. 

“Additional requests have a cost,” owner Cristina Biacchi told La Repubblica.

“We had to use two plates instead of one and the time to wash them is doubled, and then two placemats. It wasn’t a simple toasted sandwich, there were also French fries inside. It took us time to cut it in two.”

She also noted that the customer did not complain or question the charge and clarified that she would have removed the charge from the bill, if someone had raised an issue. 

The extra charge is not unheard of in expensive cities and popular tourist destinations, with some cities in the United States are sometimes hitting diners with a share charge, or a split plate charge, to make up for the lower check average at a table, while some New York City eateries even ban the practice of sharing all together.

Image credit: TripAdvisor

Tags:
travel trouble, fee, Italy, sandwich