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.
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
RSS