A good lesson learned: Self-Service but watch your portion...
 

Hi Everybody,

My husband and I just returned from Italy last Friday. First, thank you for all your help and advise. They are really helpful. We have a fantastic time and love Italy immensely.

I would like to share our little embarrassing lesson we learned from this trip.

We were in Venice and we stopped at a self-service restaurant next to the Rialto Vaporatto stop. Basically you pick up a tray, point to the food you want, they spoon you the food, and you pay at the end of the line.

At the beginning of the line, there was this little appetizer session where you get a small plate and you fill it up with the appetizers you want yourself for 5 euro/plate.

So, we thought, that's great. Let's get some. We piled our plate with about 2 layers of appetizers, some tuna, some eggplant, etc. Then when we were about to pay, they charged us double (10 euro) for that plate. They explained to us that the portion we had was for two persons........

We were a little shocked, embarrassed,... and never went back there again.

clok

Sounds about the right price to me, you did have two layers of food, lol.

Sounds like a bargain to me, but I'm curious if you did a meal as well or just that? I remember a place in Rome where they said it was one price as an antipasta before your ordered dinner, but double if it was your meal.

Like a salad bar in the US. Cheaper when you order a main course. We had the same kind of problem in Turkey. They would come around with plates of goodies & we didn't know how much it cost or if it was part of dinner.

I actually like the high expectations that NE Italians show towards tourists to uphold dignity and behave right. Not only for portion sizes, but I notice dissapointment when I dress too sloppy for an occasion or behave too frantically rushed in some interaction. I get an attitude of "what a surprise, I thought you would be above that" which is hard to argue with.

We get so used to a relationship of pushing boundaries (even while staying ethical and legal), that it can be refreshing to find a place where relationships (tourist/consumer) are expected to be dignified and considerate of one another's interests. I liked hearing of a recent fodorite being scolded by a hotel for shortening their stay without being absolutely sure the hotel had advance notice in high season.

P.S. those Rialto self serve restaurants were highlighted in guidebooks (and my long past experience) to be awful values - tourist traps. Maybe better now?

viking, give it a rest. Indirectly slamming the poster for putting too much on her plate is over the top. Most of your honored NE Italians are out to make a buck and nothing more.

Viking, if you were actually "upholding dignity and behaving right" you wouldn't have posted your rather pompous message in the first place.

For clok. I am sorry you were treated rudely on this board. I thought your initial post was iteresting as I had had a similar confusing situation. There are customs in all countries that the indigenous take for granted & are a mystery to the visitor. I ended up without the roasted chicken in Paris because I didn't realize that they weren't already cooked & ready for carry-out immediately. Ah, the haplesss tourist.

I really appreciate clok's message; it certainly helps to know little things like this. I also doubt "dignity" had anything to do with it, having myself observed some NE Italians steal food (bread rolls) from a self-service cafeteria. More likely, as someone else said it, it's an easy way to make a buck off the surprised tourist.

Europeans in general are shocked and amazed at how much food Americans eat. Let's be honest here for a minute, our portions are way beyond what they should be and we live within a "Super Size" equals more value mentality (Quality be DAMNED). We are so used to being overserved in restaurants at home that we see nothing wrong with "splitting" antipasti or entrees while abroad. Eventhough clok was not splitting I must say that the truth be known, it makes you look cheap. While you may not care and rally to protect your right to do so, "splitting" is also considered rude. I am not at all surprised that the poster was charged for two instead of one. Restaurants are not in the business to loose money if they can avoid it and it does not sound like they were eating the usual American slop offered at those self serve places. Although it was in the Rialto, was it as bad and tasteless as say a Soup Plantation near a lovely American strip mall? Sounds like tuna and eggplant costs a bit more then soggy cornbread and iceburg lettuce drenched in chemicals. I am only sorry for the embarassment she must have felt although no fault of the restaurants.

I don't know anything about the self-serve places near the Rialto bridge in Venice, but I do think that 10 euros for a plate with two layers of appetizers on it is not a bad deal.
Clok learned the hard way that fair is fair when it comes to loading up at buffets in Europe (unlike in the USA, where you can pile a truckload worth of food on your plate and no one will bat an eyelash).
It was an embarrassing lesson, as you say, and, well, there you go...another country, another lesson. It's all part and parcel of traveling in Europe.

If you eat near the Rialto, you eat at your own risk. There are very few reputable places in the Rialto area to eat and they're all well documented. Venice's Rialto is NYC's Times Square - a tourist mecca. I think StCirq hit it best: for 10 euros you got yourself quite a bargain.

To me, this was a case of the terms of service between buyer and seller being ambiguous. Had the appetizers been sold by weight or even by number clok wouldn't have been confused. But a 'plate' worth is a rather hazy definition. If I buy salad in a self-serve bar, does a 'plate' worth mean that the layer of lettuce be exactly one leaf thick? Two layers? Three? How about the case where I top the lettuce with a single olive - does that count as a layer? The point is, buyers in this situation need an objective reference in order to make an informed judgement. How can we judge what is a good bargain if we have no way of meaningfully comparing the product on sale between one establishment than another?

On the other hand, I also tend to think 'caveat emptor' - and we all know from what country Latin arose! So I suppose one could say, when in doubt, ask. But to hold clok solely responsible (let alone morally culpable) for this incident is unfair.

10Es for one plate - some deal. It had better be a BIG one. Sounds like the terms of service were too vague. I bet the management rips off plenty of tourists with this little scam.

It always amazes me how a few posters ALWAYS slam and blame fellow Americans for EVERY incident or misunderstanding, no matter what the situation.

Its almost like they are spring loaded to defend the wonderful Europeans and assume the worst about the dumb and uncivilized Americans who they feel should just shut up and be humble and eternally grateful for just getting a chance to a visit Europe.

Americans don't have a lock on being rude, sneaky and unethical. In fact, didn't most of our relatives come from europe? Oh, I'm sorry - the imagined storyline is that only bad europeans came to America!

Dumas remarks

>...the imagined storyline is that only bad europeans came to America! <

As Mark Twain once mentioned, "My family tree has only one branch, and that's horizontal". (or words to that effect)

Is it dumas or degas? Does fodors know?

Is NYCFoodSnob also Uncle Sam or maybe Pixie?

At the beginning of the line, there was this little appetizer session where you get a small plate and you fill it up with the appetizers you want yourself for 5 euro/plate.

If that was the exact terms of the contract between you and the restauranteer I would say as long as it fitted on a plate then it should have cost 5 euros. It could have been leaning off your plate like the Tower of Pisa. Nowhere did the restauranteer state only one food item per plate for 5 euros. Under Italian law this is termed 'Gorda Turista'. I would take them on with an oily no-win no-fee Italian lawyer to get your 5 euros back.

"Is NYCFoodSnob also Uncle Sam or maybe Pixie?"

ABSOLUTELY NOT! I have no desire and no need to be anyone else on fodors. I know why I'm here. And while I am, I intend to respect fodors' rules. I also know that fodors can see IP addresses. I wonder if they've checked yours?

I'm getting quite a laugh out of the quasi-profundity of some of the comments here.

Re: <i>We piled our plate with about 2 layers of appetizers, . . . Then when we were about to pay, they charged us double (10 euro) for that plate. They explained to us that the portion we had was for two persons.</i>

Like Natalia said, you did have two layers of food. This is one of those &quot;letter-of-the-law&quot; vs. &quot;spirit-of-the-law&quot; issues.

As far as the &quot;letter-of-the-law&quot; goes, as rquirk wrote, &quot;<i>If that was the exact terms of the contract between you and the restauranteer I would say as long as it fitted on a plate then it should have cost 5 euros</i>&quot;, but as far as the &quot;spirit-of-the-law&quot; goes, I doubt they intended for people to put portions on that plate that went beyond &quot;reasonable&quot; while still paying only 5 euros.

This is why I prefer to sit down and be served.

I think your misunderstanding came about because you are used to Soup Kitchens or whatever they are called here in the USA, where you can pile up a foot high stack of food, eat it and then go back for more.
In Italy the appetizer is just that:to set your appetite for the meal to come, it is not the meal in itself.

It is just a culture clash and you have to respect the country you are in, I bet Europeans can't get the idea of all you can eat-pile it on the plate places here either. Expect some German nationals that I know, they have discovered one &amp; now it is their favorite restaurant.

Live and learn about other cultures, that is the idea of traveling isn't it?
No one to blame, just learning experience, true?

Ah, but capo, what if I am in good spirits and the restauranteur is in poor spirits, whose spirit applies to the law? What if I have just imbibed a plateful, or should that be a skinful, of spirits, what then? Does my version of the law then apply? :)

Seriously, I think it would be premature to conclude either that the restaurant is intentionally trying to mislead or that the buyer was trying to take advantage. This goes even if you try to apply your spirit of the law argument. Sure, the restaurant might argue that the appetizers be purchased more or less as they would be served at table, i.e. one layer thick, but on the other hand if they were served at table, they might just as easily have been served on a full size dinner plate as opposed to what clok describes only as a 'small' (bread-and-butter? saucer?) sized plate. Even amongst Italians, who presumably are familiar with their own cultural norms, they still rely on standard units of measurement to avoid this kind of misunderstanding.

So I think both parties share the responsibility this time out.

I think some people are confusing the concept of &quot;self serve&quot; with &quot;all you can eat&quot; or eating too much or as much as two people. I've never seen that idea except in the US, so I think just letting people put their own stuff on a plate from an area for convenience or because they can easily pick and choose what they want while looking at it, does not mean a restaurant expects somebody to pile appetizers two layers high on a small plate. The folks who are talking about implied contracts etc seem to be thinking there was a sign about &quot;all you can eat&quot; or something, and there wasn't. I don't think the restaurant was ripping anyone off, that was too much food to take for an appetizer. Some people would probably then expect to share that with others who would then get a free meal or to not even pay or order a main meal.

I don't think the restaurant bears responsibility for not expecting someone to pile a plate two layers deep with food so that it contains two persons' amounts on one dish in a manner that would never be the way appetizers would normally be served. They probably expect most people to eat normally. What should they do, put up a sign saying five euro per plate but don't pile your food a foot high?

I've been to a couple cafeterias in France, but I don't think they handled it like that for the side dishes -- as I recall, they were already portioned out into small dishes in the ones where I ate, and then you ordered from a guy behind a counter for main dishes.

Very well said, Christina.

Christina,

The folks who are talking about implied contracts etc seem to be thinking there was a sign about &quot;all you can eat&quot; or something, and there wasn't.

Implication does not fit the letter of the law (it starts with the letter 'I' not 'L'). The originator clearly stated along the lines that it was a statement of 1 Plate/5 Euros. Your understanding is almost libellous in that it calls my professional and accurate answer based on the established facts into disrepute. Count yourself incredibly lucky that I will not take you to the cleaners and demand 5 Euros compensation *THIS ONE TIME*.

nocinonut, a &quot;soup kitchen&quot; is a place where poor or homeless people go to get feed, usually by a church or charity group. They usually serve much more than just soup. I think it became a common term during the Great Depression.

What you are talking about is a &quot;Buffet&quot; and many of those are not &quot;all you can eat&quot;. Often you are restricted to a single plate, but you can &quot;pile it high&quot; and not be charged double.

Well, I love a good debate, so here I am again.

Christina, &quot; All-you-can-eat&quot; involves varying the discrete number of times a serving vessel can be filled. What people have been discussing is a continuous variable known as volume, i.e. the size of any given fill.

You and others accuse the tourist of deviating from accepted &quot;normal&quot; practice. I agree that piling plates isn't pretty, it's sloppy and Grandma most certainly wouldn't approve. Then again, Grandma wouldn't approve of charging guests for hospitality. In other words, this is about trading practices, not etiquette, no matter how much fun we all have giving lectures on protocol. ( And I agree, it IS fun. : - ) )

It is the restaurant that has deviated from the officially recognized national norms of Italy. The restaurant has rejected Italy's standard unit of volume (the litre/milliliter) in favour of improvising their own units. A plate is very arbitrary means of measuring food volume, since a plate is two-dimensional whereas food is not only three-dimensional, it varies in the third dimension depending on the nature of the foodstuff and how it is prepared. (Eggplant is rarely sliced to the same thickness as salami, for example.) It isn't so uncommon for restaurants to sell food by the plate, but if the restaurant then proceeds to delegate to their clients the task of serving out the food on sale, the restaurant can hardly reasonably demand that their clients be accountable for conforming to 'standards' that weren't there in the first place.

Even my own earlier suggestion that restaurant table service follows a consistent standard was wrong. When I thought about it I remembered that the 'one layer rule' doesn't seem to be followed when, for example, salami slices are served: these tend to be arranged on the plate such that each slice is overlapped by the next, or in other words, salami is served at table not in a single layer but multiple layers.

What should the restaurant do? Your saying that they have no reasonable alternative doesn't make it so. Pre-cooked food is sold all over Italy by weight, especially in pizzerias and those 'tavola calda' eateries. All the restaurant in this case need do is tare the balance to the weight of the 'package', in this case the appetizer plate.

As for poor clok, it is she who is left bereft of alternatives. You first try and convict tourists for wanting to have too much food on their plates, you then pass sentence on those who would share food, i.e. have too little on their plates. At this rate Christina it looks like we'll all just have to forego patronizing European restaurants altogether, and survive on canned tuna and the pre-packaged pretzels we stole from the airline. : - )

I've just been waiting for an &quot;all you can eat&quot; buffet in Paris so I can drive those arrogant frenchies to the poorhouse (or is it alms-house in Europe?).

Of course, it would have to be in a very refined setting with outstanding service and only the very best quality food and wine. Hope springs eternal.

This thread has certainly gone off on all tangents. Meanwhile we haven't heard back from clok have we? More than anything else I'm still wondering if they only did the buffet as their dinner (hence charging more) or what they ordered in addition to this buffet -- if anything. To me, that makes all the difference in the world. The buffet was clearly set up as an antipasta buffet and was not intended to be a full meal, so I sure wouldn't blame a restuarant if they charged extra to someone who did in fact make it their meal.

And to those who claim that &quot;all you can eat&quot; is strictly an American thing, forget it. I've seen smorgasbords in Sweden where the locals piled up more food on their plates than you can imagine. I've also seen &quot;all you can eat&quot; buffets in Turkey, patronized by locals, and also in Spain.