Life
Japanese tourists bought two plates of spaghetti, fish and water in Rome, didn’t expect $500 bill
We thought spaghetti was cheap!
Kirsten Spruch
10.11.19

When you are a tourist in a foreign country, the way you are treated by locals can go several different ways. Some can be very warm, kind and accommodating while others can be…Well, not so very warm, kind or accommodating.

In fact, it is quite easy to get scammed by a local store or restaurant if you are not careful and aware. Some restaurant waiters make it their duty to give tourists the best experience possible, while others just happily take advantage of them and charge them unfair prices.

TripAdvisor
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TripAdvisor

This is especially the case for these two tourists who traveled all the way from Japan to Rome. They were charged 429.80 euros (which equates to almost 470 dollars) for a meal that should have been well under that. Most meals, in fact, should be under that price unless you are feeding solid bricks of gold to an entire family.

The restaurant that is currently in question is Antico Caffè di Marte. It is located in central Rome near Hadrian’s tomb, which is also known as Castel Sant’Angelo.

Harukon_et
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Harukon_et

These two are not the first to be scammed by this restaurant either. Many have been scammed and have left terrible reviews in effort to warn others. “Horrible!” one customer wrote in an online review. “We had lunch in this restaurant on August 27th and we were stolen from them. On the menu, they write 6,5 euro / 100 gram of mixed fish. When we finished our meal, we had paid 476,4 euro. When we complained about this, the boss explained the the plate of fish was 4,8 kg. We are sure it was around 2kg maximum.”

Minh Ngoc Bui
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Minh Ngoc Bui

The person writing the review continued to urge people to be careful of this and to not become the next victim. They said that if this happens to you — don’t pay. Instead, call the emergency number and wait for the police to come (that is exactly what the police told them to do when they later reported the incident). He went on to share that it was a terrible event and very depressing.

On TripAdvisor, several other customers weigh in on this, agreeing that it is a total scam. “Terrible,” “Disgusting thievery,” “scams,” and “rip-off” are just a few of the key words you can find in these horrific reviews.

Minh
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Minh

The problem here, and why people keep getting scammed, is because very few foreigners look up reviews before going out to eat in a foreign country.

One customer shared that the staff members found them in the street and persuaded them to come in for a bite. “The food was average…But to rub salt into the wound was the bill. We noticed afterwards that they added a 20% tip for themselves. Never again – SHARKS!”

harukon_et
Source:
harukon_et

“They charged an extra 6,4 euro for service and they added 8,5 euro for themselves to my card bill without asking,” another angry customer wrote. “Modern thieves.”

The owners of the restaurant told press that the Japanese tourists paid the insane prices because they apparently ate fresh fish. That’s still not a good enough reason though, and one customer weighed in afterwards to let everyone know that restaurant more than doubled the amount of seafood.

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