Dining out and understanding your restaurant billing in Italy – Part 1

When you eat out in Italy, you might discover that you are not told the price of the menu items up front or beforehand, and the bill you receive might in turn be surprising. To keep yourself from being caught off-guard, just remember these few pointers on dining.

When you eat out, add the bread and cover charge and a ten percent service charge to your bill. This might be included in the bill (reading servizio compreso’) or it might not, meaning that you’ll have to do your own arithmetic and add the appropriate value to your cost. Additional tipping is at your own discretion, but never do it in family owned and family run places because it is bad etiquette. Plus, it’s a dead giveaway that you’re a tourist, and who wants to be thought of as one of those?

A very expensive restaurant will run you over L80,000, while an inexpensive restaurant will charge less then L30,000. The moderate and expensive fall between these two and are separated by the L50,000 mark.

If you’ve visited Italy before, you might remember being able to get a full meal for less than a pound. Sadly, those days are over due in part to inflation, unstable economies, the rise of the Euro, and the fall of the dollar. However, dining out in Italy can still be seen as a bargain, especially if you order wine and then calculate how much the same amount of wine would have cost you at home.

Some restaurants have special menus for tourists, and these can be a surprisingly good deal. A menu turistico’ is a full meal (usually nothing special) for a fixed price of between L20-25,000. More imaginative and creative chefs offer a menu degustazione, which is a set-price gourmet meal that lets you taste the daily specialties and seasonal dishes. Of course, both options are cheaper than the same a la carte.

When you leave a restaurant, you will be given a receipt. According to Italian law, you must carry this with you out the door and for a distance of at least 300 meters. If you aren’t given one, authorities see that as a sign that the establishment might be fudging its taxes and thus offering you lower prices. Even though it’s unlikely that the tax police are watching the restaurant and all its exiting patrons, you might still be charged with a heavy fine if you are stopped without a receipt less than 300 meters away.