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An Italian waiter has gone viral after a video of him refusing to serve a customer her cappuccino until after she finished eating her pasta was posted on social media.
The clip was posted by Nadia Caterina Munno, a cook, author and influencer known as The Pasta Queen on Instagram earlier this week.
It shows her and her friend Cat Sullivan dining at a restaurant in Milan, when Sullivan asked the waiter for a cappuccino while still eating her pasta.
The man serving the pair appeared shocked at her request. In Italy, it is common to only drink cappuccinos before 11am, and espressos after dinner. It is also frowned upon to pair cappuccinos with pasta dishes.
The waiter asked Sullivan: “With pasta? After pasta. Are you sure?”
When she answered in the affirmative, he walked away and remarked: “This hurts so bad.”
The clip then shows Sullivan sipping on her wine with her empty plate in front of her. The waiter then arrived to clear her plate and place her cappuccino in front of her.
Sullivan thanked him, but added: “But I just finished my pasta?”
“I am sorry we are slow… we made sure to delay as much as possible so you wouldn’t eat your pasta with cappuccino,” the waiter confessed with a smile, with both Sullivan and Munno bursting into laughter.
Later, Munno revealed that the request was a prank on the waiter, adding: “I can’t believe that I am even involved in this prank.”
She captioned the humorous video: “In Milan with my friend Cat and a traumatised waiter.”
Some found the waiter’s strict adherence to Italy’s unspoken food rules hilarious, but others were less than pleased with his customer service.
“I feel so uncultured right now, because I would actually be annoyed. If I’m a paying guest, give me what I want, within reason of course,” one person wrote.
Another said: “The customer is always right. Mr waiter [sic] has no business telling her what not to drink with her pasta.”
However, several people defended the waiter, with one person explaining: “Losing a customer is not the end of the world in Italy. The waiter’s job is to give the customer the best experience of how the chef wants his food to be experienced.
“So if you don’t like it, you can leave and the world does not revolve around you.”
Others chimed in with their own experiences of ordering food in Italy that is deemed outside of the norm.
“My boyfriend wanted to order pasta Bolognese in Venice and the waiter denied the order,” one commenter wrote.
A second shared: “I once had a very nice gelateria employee in Rome refuse to give me the first flavours I ordered because they wouldn’t go well together.”
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