The venues are kept secret to bamboozle the police, and the guests are told where to go by text message. But the latest underground movement sweeping Italy has nothing to do with drugs or dance music: it is fuelled by home-made sausages, mouth-watering risottos and freshly baked bread.
Fed up with the high cost of eating out, and the recent ban on smoking in restaurants, Italians have taken to organizing illegal private meals, charging 15 euros (US$18) a head for parties of up to 40 people.
`fai da te'
The authorities have taken a dim view of the practice -- known as "fai da te," or do it yourself -- because the hosts avoid paying taxes and sidestep health and safety rules that restaurant owners have to abide by. It is also illegal to charge people for food cooked in your own home. However, that has not stopped the movement.
The trend started in Milan with groups of young people organizing do-it-yourself restaurants in private clubs or halls and apartments. In the past few months, the phenomenon has spread and "private trattorias" are springing up in central Italy.
According to the Corriere della Sera newspaper, they have become popular because of the dire state of the economy. Many Italians cannot, or will not, pay to eat out any more because prices in restaurants have soared since the introduction of the euro.
Groups of young Italians have been the driving force, the newspaper says, and all that is needed is a venue, such as a country house with a large wood-burning oven and a barbecue.
Once the number of customers is known, the group of amateur cooks devises a menu and brings dishes, cutlery, pots and pans.
"Depending on the type of clientele, the evening's entertainment might just be people sitting around talking after dinner or they might dance and have music," says Luca Goldoni, who has attended such evenings. No one protests, he says, because in summer they usually take place in isolated spots in the country.
The menu for one of the meals included home-cooked antipasti of salumi (cooked meats) with freshly baked bread, asparagus risotto, chicken with olives or wild boar stew, followed by freshly picked peaches with ice cream.
Entertainment is provided by someone who plays a guitar or accordion, and people can smoke freely and remain at table until the small hours.
private trattorias
Organizers of a private trattoria can make significant amounts of money. Forty people paying 15 euros a head means a take of 600 euros an evening. Ten such evenings a month adds up to 6,000 euros.
The Italian authorities point out that, as well as the tax evasion issue, it is against the law to charge people for food cooked in a private home.
Real restaurants also have to undergo hygiene inspections, are subject to health and safety regulations and have to pay for insurance cover and properly trained staff.
The police have said that anyone setting up a private trattoria will get a warning but will face prosecution if they continue.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS