They were looking for a bit of La Dolce Vita but what two Japanese tourists got in a restaurant in Rome left a bad taste in their mouths.
The couple was handed a 695 euro (US$980) restaurant bill after lunch last month at a restaurant just steps away from Piazza Navona. The bill included a 115.50 euro tip they say they didn’t agree to, Rome police said on Thursday.
The case made headlines in national newspapers, reportedly angering Mayor Gianni Alemanno. Police temporarily shut down the restaurant after the couple filed a complaint, police official Michele Laratta said.
Restaurant owner Franco Fioravanti told Italian newspapers that the couple looked satisfied when they left the Passetto restaurant, and that they ordered a lavish meal that included oysters, lobsters, sea bass and porcini mushrooms.
“If one wants to spend money, with us one can,” Fioravanti told La Repubblica. “What’s wrong with that?”
The couple — a 35-year-old man and a 26-year-old woman — filed their complaint a few days after their June 19 lunch at the posh century-old restaurant, Laratta said.
According to the couple’s account to police, they sat outdoors and an English-speaking waiter offered to bring a few dishes without the couple’s consulting the menu, Laratta said.
What followed was a 100 euro bottle of Sauvignon and a several-course extravaganza. Several national papers printed what they said was the receipt from the meal, which also showed pasta dishes for 200 euros.
After the complaint, police checked the prices on the receipt against those on the menu the Japanese said they never saw, and found a major discrepancy.
“They are way higher, quite a bit disproportionate,” Laratta said.
Police also sent health inspectors, who found defective refrigerators, contamination among different foods and other below-standard procedures in the restaurant’s kitchens, Laratta and news reports said.
The restaurant was closed temporarily and officials are also considering revoking the restaurant’s license.
The Passetto restaurant was closed to the public on Thursday and personnel inside refused comment to reporters.
The restaurant is a classic of Rome cuisine. Its Web site lists among its guests movie stars past and present — from Ava Gardner to Leonardo DiCaprio — as well as Queen Elizabeth, Grace Kelly and Salvador Dali.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS