La Nazione, an Italian newspaper, published an article about a chef in Florence who was closing his restaurant (Essenziale), because he no longer found it fulfilling. He said it had become a merry-go-round of eat-and-run tourists.

I don't know the restaurant, which advertised itself as "casual", but I think I understand his point. It must be more satisfying and inspirational to cook for a steady clientele, people who know your style and philosophy and return again and again. We have a few favourite restaurants that we return to again and again, and I know they are always happy to see us, to tell us of new items on the menu.

Essenziale doesn't sound like a foodie destination restauran, although maybe I'm wrong. But let's hypothesise an excellent restaurant that gets written up in dining ​​​​​blogs, or maybe even has a mention in a top restaurant guide. It's probably a bit expensive, so nobody goes there regularly for dinner, but people return often for a special treat. The tourists who come there are well-informed and appreciative of the food, but you never see them again. This is fine if you're serving a balanced ratio of tourists and regulars, but if the proportion of regulars drops very low, I'm sure it begins to feel like a merry-go-round. I'm sure this can be a problem in a city like Florence and I know it is probably dispiriting.
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https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.lanazione.it/firenze/cronaca/chef-chiude-ristorante-firenze-jmwczeb3&ved=2ahUKEwi7nPfGtaaHAxXgh_0HHaQuDcsQFnoE CBMQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3kTyRt7Y_x80jkR8c1Z6qo

I believe it is easy for a business manager to set the pattern for his restaurant and control the type of customers he gets. Seems a great idea to me.

Many years ago my family owned some 6 large hotels in the south of England. My father introduced the idea of a bar and grill service. Not especially fancy but the hotel was poshish and by extension....

It made a lot of money for a bit until he noticed he couldn't get women staff to run it. So he invited one of the usual groups who used it ( the local conservative party) to come along and he tended bar. Their behaviour was so bad he closed it half way through the shift never to open again

well, that is a foodie-destination restaurant and not exactly casual nor family-oriented. Lots of restaurants come and go, it's a tough business. If he wanted a different clientele, he shouldn't focus on expensive "tasting menus", and not have menus in English. He had limited choices and one of his main dishes, the only one on the supposed fast and casual set menu (I think), which was the only reasonably-priced one, was "fish and chips". That restaurant was written up in tourist publications like Conde Nast Traveler and foodie publications. It's not the kind of restaurant that really has regulars, seems to me.

There are plenty of restaurants filled with regulars that get written up in travel/food publications these days. And CN Traveler may have an Italian edition.
Most of the places we eat in our home city have been written up somewhere.
This one is listed in Michelin but is far down in the tourist-bible TripAdvisor. And it list the prices as 8-18euro so I would not think it would be in the "expensive" category.

That's nothing to do with the original post,of course. Wonder what chef will do now? What choice does he have ig he still wants to keep cooking in Italy? Move to a tiny town with NO tourists? I have no idea, just curious...

His website says "Fast Casual". It didn't seem expensive to me, but I only glanced at the menu.

Maybe that's a good idea. He was specifically complaining about Florence.

I would have thought that if you open a restaurant in a tourist destination, your clientele is therefore going to include many tourists. I'm not sure who he thought would be his customers in such a place. Maybe he was struggling to justify his prices and menu and decided to close because he couldn't.

Must be a hard time to have a restaurant at the moment, off the back of Covid. I know of someone who in recent times took over a "name" restaurant alongside one in his stable already and when it looked like they would both go under, he committed suicide. Both the restaurants are still in his family, I have no idea how, but they are both landmarks and so maybe the family was able to talk to the bank and get some hardship support. Not me, I have no head for business ...

Lavandula

To me eat and run implies people eating then not paying and doing a runner. Sadly an increasingly common phenomenon. That would be a reason to close your restaurant.

Is that what the OP meant..that they eat and do not pay??????
I thought it meant that they ate and left and never came back but if you are correct, that is horrific!

I don;t know what OP, or the chef in question meant, but eat and run is a term for just that.

"Morde e fuggi" is a common Italian expression regarding tourists who don't spend much money at the destination. For example daytrippers who pack a lunch, or cruisers. There's nothing wrong with that, but if they're the majority of visitors to a city, it does negatively affect hotels and restaurants.

There are a lot of restaurants in tourist areas that people go back to again and again. I have my favorites in Dubrovnik, in Venice, in London.. not everyone goes to a city only once. In many of my favorite places they recognize me, even if I haven’t been in a while. I was in a pub in London a couple of days ago and a woman working said it was nice to see a familiar face. I’ve never spoken much to her but she recognized me. This is a pub in a very touristy area (Hereford Arms on Gloucester Road, people on this forum have been there) and I was surprised she recognized me.

I think many of us have had the experience of returning to a bar or restaurant in the same trip, and being greeted warmly on the second visit, even more warmly on the third…

Maybe this chef wasn’t getting enough people coming back once a month or once a year. I get how that could be a bit soul crushing. A few years ago I went to a super touristy restaurant by the Pantheon in Rome, I didn’t want to go but my friends wanted to take me there. They had a nice time the night before and wanted to return. The waiter, who basically served tourists from all over the world for 12 hours a day six days a week told me his dream was to open a small cafe in his neighborhood in Rome (not one full of tourists) so he could spend more time with his family. His family could hang out in the cafe. I totally get that.

Running a restaurant is not easy and is even harder now with inflation.. food costs are up but you can’t overprice your menu. And then some jerk will write a one star review because he didn’t get butter with his bread..

By "eat-and-run tourists," I think the chef meant that (many) tourists don't typically linger over a meal as Italians do but are quick to ask for the bill and move on, probably to never return.

Essenziale has several popular and highly-rated competitors within a few blocks... some with better reviews, including one ("Le Volte") that we stumbled upon near the Brancacci Chapel. So, there may be other reasons the chef has become disenchanted.

Jean's interpretation of "eat and run" was mine as well. Ironically, there is an expression used in the American restaurant industry that IS similar that is ubiquitous for those that do not pay. We referred to them as "dine and ditch." Sometimes heard "dine and dash" but "ditch" is more common to refer to the non-payment.

I tend not to linger too much when i dine anywhere. I am often solo and do not need to eat much. And the Italian dining culture of having an appetizer, a first course, maybe a second course AND possibly dessert. I cant do it. Its too much. Not to mention the expense. I may do this one time on a two week trip. Otherwise, I eat a small, basic meal and go on my way. Im one of those tourists he is talking about.

Restaurant industry has always been a fickle one. In the US anyway, if an establishment doesn�t turn a profit within 2 years, they go under. And that first two year period is the most crucial. I imagine some of those same issues are present in Italy.

It was "mordi e fuggi", if you read the article, his complaint had nothing to do with people leaving without paying. Just doesn't like tourists much or people who only come once, I guess. I can't imagine why any restauranteur would care if someone didn't linger for hours, as it turns over tables and gives them a chance for more revenue. I don't think that's it, if you read the article, he is just complaining that FLorence has been too overloaded with tourists and compares it to Venice, so his clients aren't local. Which I find odd, as Florence has been one of the main tourist visited cities in Italy for decades, not just recently. And it doesn't have cruise ships for people who only come during the day, at least not as much as Venice as it's farther from a port.

He got some good reviews but that type of restaurant is not where people want to go repeatedly. I don't have any sympathy for him, to be honest, with his expensive tasting menu approach. I just don't like that trend, although one could say why do I care if I never buy them. It just changes a restaurant and makes it a more special one-off type restaurant, but I am not a foodie and don't go to places like that anyway, to be honest.

I also do not eat that much food, either, I'm with Travel Nerd. I don't like that many courses and to be honest, don't usually have dessert. I am not sure where that custom even came from because after a full meal, I do not want to eat any more as I'm full. I do like some sweets and types of desserts, I just don't like it as a course after dinner. I usually have it alone with coffee or after a couple hours at least.

There is no reason anyone has to have more than one course if that is what they want. I go to Italy fairly often, and I never eat app, primi and secondi anymore, and I often just order half portion of pasta or other primi and sometimes half a second course. Or I might have an antipasto and a mezzo of pasta......To think that you need to eat all that just to "fit in" is an outdated tourist idea, sorry to be blunt. That's the wonderful thing about Italian restaurants; many are so flexible when it comes to ordering. (You want to try a tiny portion of an appetizer? No problem.....sometimes I've had it given as a gift. Can't decide between the scoglio or the gamberoni? No problem--we have a very small fish and you can order the shrimp by the piece if you like....on and on it goes. Such hospitality. Granted I no longer travel to Florence of many of the super-touristed places (save Rome once is a while) so maybe its different there.

Looked to me that that restaurant had a la carte as well as tasting menus. Maybe I read wrong.

I agree with Cristina that restauranteurs wouldn't be terribly bothered by tourists who don't linger over the meal. The turnover of tables increases their profit.

Here is a quotation from an article about the mordi e fuggi phenonom.

"L'impostazione tradizionale, ormai almeno ufficial- mente superata, di turismo �mordi e fuggi�, destinato a consumare un gran numero di luoghi ed attrattive in poco tempo, pu� persino aggiungere una componente di stress al viaggio, ridotto ad una continua serie di spostamenti intervallati da immagini da cartolina, il ..."

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...RDOMwvZoqTkK53

Certainly some tourists, like rialtogirl and ekscrunchy, have favourite restaurants where they return often. This is exactly the kind of client who brings satisfaction to a chef. The chef in the article I read was lamenting an entirely different kind of experience. And it's not just foreign tourists who do this. Many Italian tourists also travel like this.

Perhaps I am trying to eat to fit in... I was taught how to order in Italian restaurant by a former Italian boyfriend. So, guess he was outdated, too. 🤷‍♀️

Good..he is a "former" boyfriend!!

Seriously, I'e been so overwhelmed my the kindness of most restaurant staff in Europe. Why can Ii rarely get a half order of pasta here in the US?

Not only that, take-home seems no longer to be frowned upon because I've been asked many times, in Italy and Spain, if I wanted my leftovers packed up to take "home." Years ago people made fun of Americans asking for '"dog bags." No one calls it that now..no need for euphemisms nowadays....

I invariably want to sample more dishes than I can handle and am often left taking away the remainder. Sometimes it gets eaten standing over the sink, sometimes it gets tossed....but if you wish to do so, there is no shame in asking to take home leftovers.....portare, maybe, in Italian, para llevar in Spanish.

YOU are the customer. Behave in keeping with your location, ask questions and show an interest in food......you do not need to over order, even if I often do, due to curiosity about various dishes. And take it home if you want to.

And you DO NOT need to leave a tip if you prefer not to do so.

As our friend Zebec says, "I am done here," Buon Appetito and apologies for my non-existent Italian and sometimes shrill ways to get my opinion across.