Tourists charged $1.7k for steak in Venice

Eating out while holidays can be tricky, trying to find somewhere delicious that doesn’t blow the budget all the while making your fellow travellers happy.

Meals in hotspot tourist destinations, such as Paris and Barcelona, can be especially taxing.

But there’s expensive, and then there’s extortion, as a group of Japanese tourists found out the hard way while in Venice.

The group of students ate at the Osteria de Luca restaurant near St Marks Square and found themselves with a €1106.51 (AUD$1692.78) bill.

Before jumping to any conclusions about the students accidentally ordering a truffle and gold leaf pizza, the bill was for three steaks, fried fish and a mineral water.

After receiving the bill, the group went to the local police to report the restaurant.

Unfortunately, the situation the students found themselves in is a very common one for tourists.

Speaking to Venice Today, a spokesman for Gruppo 25, a Venice civil rights organisation said, “This is just the latest case of many of this kind.

“The young people, who are university students in Bologna, made a formal denunciation to the local police station as soon as they got off the train.”

Other tourists who have visited restaurants in the same area as Osteria de Luca said they left feeling “conned”.

bill

According to The Sun, a University lecturer Luke Tang, said he found himself in a similar situation, stating that his lack of Italian allowed the restaurant to take advantage of him.

“They said they’d sort out lunch for us — we just wanted a few small starters and then some spaghetti.

“The next thing I knew we were being served 20 oysters, which I thought was a bit odd as we hadn’t asked for them and my elderly parents don’t eat shellfish.’’

Osteria de Luca is currently rated 1.5 stars out of 5 on TripAdvisor with the three most recent reviews claiming it is a “Rip off”, “Scam” and “Rip off central, avoid at all costs”.

Do you have something to say on this issue? Get in touch with Travel Weekly Editor Daisy Doctor here to share your thoughts.

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Latest comments

Owen Olsen says:
January 23, 2018 at 5:21 pm
At the top of the bill you can see who the owner of the Osteria Da Luca (not De Luca) is. A certain Zheng Chenyi & Company.
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con expensive meal Osteria da Luca restaurant rip off scam tourists venice