Rookie error - know what per kilo is in italian

Oh noooooo!!!! I hope it was scrumptious???
This is a GREAT piece of insight, and a mistake not reserved just for rookies!

Yes, that menu price was probably per etto or hundred grams and the whole fish itself might weigh 3 or 4 times that much. Consider fresh fish to be a premium option (also steak), so that the final price will usually be at least as high as any other main course on the list.

Oh, yeah, you've got to know about "etto". How funny! What was the restaurant?

I'm not sure I understand this. Waiter says one thing and menu says another? What am I missing?

Read the posts by Laura and Michael (above) and you will understand

still don't get it. other than a 159 euro meal ... my pockets are not that deep

The waiter told them the price per kilo...13 Euros. The fish weighed more than one kilo - let's say 4 kilos. So they paid 13x4, which is 52 Euros. The same goes for the 11 Euro entree. Basically, they were quoted a price per kilo and the fish weighed multiple kilos, so they paid several times the per kilo price.

Like if you go the butcher and see that ham is $10 per pound and you get 2 pounds you pay $20

Edit - obviously my metric sense is off too. 4 kilos would be way, way more than one serving! Replace the word "kilo" above with "etto", which is 100 grams. 4 etto is something like 3/4 lb

I'm a American, we don't get kilo's or anything else metric. It is what it is.

what were you eating for three weeks that you never touched meat or fish?

For future reference, as others have said, you pay by the kilo, or usually by 100 grams. As a point of reference, 100 grams is about 3.5 ounces, 200 grams about 7ounces, which are good normal servings for dieters and normal eaters respectively.

Also surprised about limoncello in Venice

I did not get what happened either till about 4 post in. I know they sell Pizza and sandwiches by the weight, but I had no idea that a sit down restaurant would do this. Is this common and is it obvious on the menu? I love the idea of being able to purchase a small portion by weight of various foods (Pizza and sandwiches) but I would not expect that for a sit down restaurant.

It might be my financial accounting background but these prices don't reconcile.

Pasta, even seafood, is never sold by the kg or hg, I've never heard of pasta being sold by weight. So that pasta dish was €11 total of the dish. And €11 is a price that I would reasonably expect to pay for a seafood pasta course.

Fish may be sold by the Kg and one Kg is 2.2 Lb.

If the price was €13/Kg, and all your husband had was that (and you had the seafood pasta), your husband needed to eat about 10 Kg of fish for the bill to get close to €159. Unless you are married to a some kind of big wild feline, I don't think that is possible.

If the price was €13/Hg (i.e. €130/kg) then I need to know what kind of fish you ordered and where, because €130/kg even for fresh fish is an absurdly exorbitant price anywhere in Italy. I have never heard of a restaurant charging that much, that is almost 3 times the average price for fresh sword fish, or sea bream or scampi, in most restaurants. €130/kg is highway robbery.

You must have ordered a lot more than what you said, including some expensive wine bottles, because a seafood pasta and even an expensive fish main course would not have cost that much.

Roberto and his math make an excellent point. I'm guessing maybe you guys ordered more than just the fish and pasta. Wine? Antipasto? Contorni (or side dishes)? Dessert?

For anyone else who hasn't figured out what's going on, the menu in these cases would say something like "11 euro / etto" meaning 11 euros for 100 grams. All other items on the menu will just read "11 euro", without "etto".

The problem here is that they weren't going off a written menu, but rather what the waiter was telling them was the special of the day. He certainly should have said "per etto".

So what exactly should the customers say when ordering items that are "per etto"?

slavender,

Thanks for posting, as this may save others from suffering the same fate. This sounds like a case of a sleazy restaurant gouging customers who weren't familiar with the way the system worked (especially in a different language). I'd be interested to know the name of the restaurant (via PM if you wish).

Sounds like the restaurants in the U.S. which have specialties listed "market price" -- can be a big surprise when the bill arrives.

EDIT - not that it's a scam, just that it's a reminder to get more Information from the waiter.

Yes we ordered a lot more than the two dishes. There were four of us, plus wine us dessert plus coffee. The two dishes mentioned were the two where the per etto applied that I hadn't understood. Just to make it clear - the restaurant didn't do anything wrong. I went with the suggestion without knowing what per etto meant. I hadn't ordered fish this way in the 3 weeks - up to now just ordered set dishes. The food was great. It wasn't the restaurants issue. It was me ordering only knowing the common words on the menu not thinking.

I agree with Emma. Ken, this IS NOT a "sleazy restaurant gouging customers". There are too many posters who are happy to yell "scam" because they paid more than they thought due to their own ignorance.

It is normal in Italian restaurants, and sometimes other countries, to price items which can vary in size by weight. It usually says € xxx per etto on the menu. 1 etto = 100 g. The waiter usually shows you the one (fish or whatever) to give you a chance to say it is too big or too small.
As slavender says "It wasn't the restaurants issue. It was me ordering only knowing the common words on the menu not thinking. "
Motto: read the menu phrase book and learn those little words like "etto".

A much bigger and real scam is the way in the US they never post the real price of items in the shops. They post one price, but when you have to pay the add on tax or compulsary "tip" as an extra. That would be fraudulent labelling in most European countries.

There are two kinds of countries in the world. Those that use Metric and those that have put a man on the moon.

Yes, I know that NASA uses Metric.

"NASA uses metric" Well, there you are then.

One of Nasa's greatest failures occurred when half the engineering team was using metric and the other half English. Missed the target by a wide margin.

I am pretty sure the price stated was per etto and no kilo. a 3 kilo fish would be 6 pounds -- doubt they were eating like that.

Chris- They can't advertise tax because it varies from state/city/county...I pay 7.5%, I can drive 40 min and pay 8.0 or I can drive 12 hours and enter a no-state tax state. No tax on food purchased in the grocery store. Tips in restaurants are usually added to parties of 6 or more (or whatever the restaurnt states on their menu). No scam just common knowledge.

Yes we ordered a lot more than the two dishes. There were four of us, plus wine us dessert plus coffee.

This dilutes the entire meaning of your post. Trying to relate €159 to only two diners and the meals mentioned is misleading and creates wrong impressions (made worse by the limoncello reference as if that was some kind of compensation). You should have only focused on what the two dishes ultimately cost (adjusted by weight), not the entire bill which had lots of other things included. That was the punchline. Reading posts like these really makes me shake my head.

Actually, a nice dinner for 4 with wine, desserts, etc. is probably a bargain at 159.... Although it is helpful for people to know how the pricing of the entrée works, it is a bit misleading as to the actual cost of the food in question.

If you go to a restaurant in the US that is serving fresh lobster or crab at "market price," they may quote you a price per pound and the next step is to ask the average size of the lobsters, or say that you want one between 1-2 pounds. Serving other fish whole is much more common in Mediterranean countries, so I've frequently seen the price "per etto" in Italy or "/100 g" in various countries. (If the fish are so fresh that the menu is handwritten, then you should also count on the handwriting being hard to read; that's standard.) In places where you see the fish on display (common in Greece), then I can choose a plate-sized fish and guestimate that I'm not getting myself in too deep. A large fish like swordfish will be cut into steaks or fillets, so those menu items should show the whole price.

In delis, too, some items may be priced per etto or 100 g, instead of per kilo, especially more expensive items, or small things that nobody buys a kilo of. You would not expect a restaurant pasta dish to be priced this way, but sometimes they are priced per person with a 2-person minimum (solo traveler pet peeve). Rick makes an effort to describe these issues in the phrasebooks and the back of each country guide (saving the best for last), e.g. p. 1188 in the Italy book.

Oh well, that's what credit cards are for... oops, many smaller Italian restaurants only take cash.

I've absolutely seen menu items priced by weight in the U.S. -- at fancier restaurants or at a crab shack!

To follow up on Letizia's comment regarding Chris' remarks about sales tax and tip being added to stated menu prices "It's not a scam. Just common knowledge."

Common knowledge if you live there -- news to the visitor. That's how we have our "common knowledge" expanded -- one of the benefits of travel!

Your post is a bit misleading especially now that you say this:

Yes we ordered a lot more than the two dishes. There were four of us, plus wine us dessert plus coffee.

So you paid €159 for 4 meals, including wine, coffee & dessert, (equivalent to €40pp/meal) which is very reasonable.

Letezia, the reason the price quoted on menus in the US does not include tax isn't because it varies by state. It's because people don't want to include tax when calculating their tip so they want to see the price without tax included. Another reason to show it separately is because it makes it easier for the business to report actual earnings and to report taxes to authorities. Either way it's not a scam and I don't think anybody thinks it is.

For those who commented on the amount of the total check, I don't think the OP was suggesting it was a scam or that it was overpriced; just that they weren't aware of the pricing method so they were surprised by the amount when the check came and wanted to alert others in advance.

I am surprised no one has mentioned the highly dubious resort fees that are charged by some US hotels and hidden away deep in the fine print!

Nancy writes:

Letezia, the reason the price quoted on menus in the US does not include tax isn't because it varies by state. It's because people don't want to include tax when calculating their tip so they want to see the price without tax included. Another reason to show it separately is because it makes it easier for the business to report actual earnings and to report taxes to authorities.

I have to disagree. I think the two reasons restaurants in the US don't fold the tax into their prices are:
1. It keep the numbers lower that way.
2. Nobody else does it.

But there's no way of knowing for sure. It's all speculation.

It's not just the US that doesn't have the tax in the final price...come to Canada sometime! Our tax here in Nova Scotia is 15%...so it was fun when I worked retail trying to explain to people from out of the country - no...take the price you see and add another 15% on top. There is the rare bird that will have the taxes in, but they are not the norm.

I actually quite like it in Europe when you see the price, you KNOW that is the price (well, in most cases ;) ). They had talked one time about changing the system in our province so tax was in the displayed price, but too much backlash from the businesses...gives us something else to complain about when we aren't complaining about the weather.

Yes, Nicole, the taxes ( there are two) add up to 15 percent here in Quebec, too. It makes it easy to calculate the tip.

I have just spent a ton of time on Priceline trying to find a hotel for a conference in Vegas... and by the time you get to the end of that pricing it is ridiculous... All add the tax, then most (but not all) add the Mandatory Fee (whatever that is) and it does not appear to be a percentage... just sort of random. So, you need to keep selecting the room and then go most of the way through the process to compare prices, because the posted price has nothing to do with the final price...the ones that had the cheaper listed price often end up being more than the ones with the higher listed price... I guess they like to keep you confused!

When fish is priced per etto it is generally for a small whole fish, meant to serve one person. Something like triglie ( red mullet) or orata ( sea bream). These fish are weighed whole (generally 2-3 etti), cooked, and then the waiter filets the fish at table. I always ask for a small one, with a smile and a shrug to indicate I am small myself, and cannot eat a lot.

Actually our favorite fish is the "mixed grill" one sees on many Venice menus. This is an assortment of if fish and crustaceans, including some weird characters not seen in this hemisphere. The platter is for two to share and priced accordingly.

Please don't generalize about Americans and the metric system. There are many Americans comfortable with the metric system, particularly people who work in a science.

€159 for 4 people is €40 per person, or $45 per person.

The last time I spent just $45 in an Italian restaurant in the SF Bay Area, I hadn't even heard of the internet yet.

I wonder how much fresh fish is actually caught in the wild anymore. I was recently at the Adriatric of Le Marche region, and my hosts said that all the fresh fish I see at the street markets and the supermercato are all raised on fish farms.

That doesn't make it any cheaper. My Adriatic contacts won't let me treat them to fresh fish meals at local ristoranti, saying one fresh fish meal costs 50 to 60 Euro minimum. And that fresh fish is so expensive at the markets it's priced out of their range.

This last time I paid my host 120 Euro for three pasta lunches, one homemade pizza supper, and one fresh fish lunch. I got one Gamberetto for that lunch. In a tasty rice risotto.

Apparently I hadn't understood what they meant by the high cost of fresh fish.

So here I pig out on Honey Walnut Shrimp at Panda Express.

"It's because people don't want to include tax when calculating their tip so they want to see the price without tax included."

Oh, so when business show the price of items before taxes they're really doing it for our benefit. How thoughtful. BTW, you might be interested in a bridge I can sell you real cheap.

The real reason American businesses (restaurants) don't include taxes in the price is in order to mislead you into thinking you are paying less, so you'll spend more. Same goes for unbundling their labor cost into "tips".

BTW, a metric is a measurement. The so-called Metric System is only one system of measurement, as is the American (formerly English) System. The system you call Metric was invented by the French. Let's call it what it is, the French System.

The OP's error had nothing to do with not understanding a measuring system, but with not understanding a language. In the French ("metric") System 100 grams is a "hectogram" (like 1000 grams is a kilogram). Etto is Italian for hecto.

BTW, a metric is a measurement. The so-called Metric System is only one system of measurement, as is the American (formerly English) System. The system you call Metric was invented by the French. Let's call it what it is, the French System.

True, when used as a noun, a "metric" can refer to any system of measurement. However, when used as an adjective--as in the "metric system"--it can refer specifically to the system of measure based on the meter. Grammar done for the day...

We used to call the American system the Imperial Measurement System, a leftover from our former colonial status, I guess. We in Canada have become quite used to the metric system on the whole, though most grocery stores where I live still show produce and meat prices in pounds and kilos. I guess they want to accommodate the diehards.

Don't even get me started on Las Vegas Hotels "restort fee"!! I usually dont pay over $100.00 a room and that includes the resort fee , so no room over $75.00...or they have to throw in some freebies like two buffets or free tube rentals. If you go often then you are aware of the resort fees and can plan accordingly. I just think of it as my "pool use" fee, chairs, towels, pool, entertainment (people watching) and divded by two people, easier to swallow.

My car gets 20,000 furlongs per hogshead of gasoline and that's the way I like it!

Yes - here in Canada we still do a little of both.

Gas and distance is in litres and meters, but when I buy food I generally do it by the pound (1 pound of meat, 5 lbs of potatoes). And height and body weight (for me) is still in feet/inches and pounds. When we take our dog to the vet, they weigh him in kilos, and I still can't figure it out.

My mom is still old school F for temperature, but I use Celcius. It's a really weird combo of both worlds!

I consider myself as "bi-metrical" (ie I am fluent in two measurement system, the French and American systems). The first two years of my engineering education were in the pure sciences (Chemistry and Physics), and we were told that intelligent life could not exist outside the French (aka Metric) System. Then I got into my Mechanical Engineering courses, which were taught in the American System, and I discovered that it worked, too. Much of my working career has been with medical equipment, where we used the French System of measurement.

Basically, it doesn't matter which measurement system you use, as long as you are consistent. One is not vastly superior to the other. And, if you understand a few conversion factors, you can go easily between both systems.

We used to call the American system the Imperial Measurement System, a leftover from our former colonial status

Except to make things even more confusing, the U.S. system isn't the same as the Imperial (British) system. We use the same units, but the measurements aren't always the same. For example, a U.S. pint is 16 ounces while an Imperial pint is 20 ounces. It actually gets trickier because a U.S. fluid ounce isn't the same as an Imperial fluid ounce.

One is not vastly superior to the other. And, if you understand a few conversion factors, you can go easily between both systems...

And know fractions. Anyone can figure out what wrench to try next when the 10mm is too small, but what if the 11/16 wrench is too small? Which one do you try next...?

Anyone can figure out what wrench to try next when the 10mm is too small, but what if the 11/16 wrench is too small? Which one do you try next...?

3/4 of course!

I think the OP is no longer interested...

Emma,

I thought you wuz a Lady!!

Beer may be by the pint - or a bit less if the punter is a foreigner and doesn't know it isn't Munich and not supposed to be half froth or head - but Ladies drink wine. Ladies drink wine measured out in ml (millilitres). The same with spirits. Not by the gill any longer....

Well Keith. we did, more or less, follow your language, with some glaring differences. We stuck to miles, feet, yards, inches, pounds, ounces because you guys brought it to us. You moved on, we did not. So we kinda embraced the old English standard and stuck with it. Still don't why you would call a car hood a "bonnet" or a toilet a " Lew" or a apartment a "flat". But there ya go ... its why the USA is not England. But we are ok with each other.