TRAVELLERS to France have been warned about a little-known “custom” which saw a tourist reportedly chased down the road by a raging waiter.
Your holiday across the Channel could go pear-shaped if you ignore the bizarre rule.
GettyDinner in Saint-Tropez can cost a fortune[/caption]
Some restaurants in France have a “minimum tip” policy – where diners have to top up their bill by a certain percentage.
Other joints have a “minimum spend” policy where the bill itself must exceed a certain figure.
Few tourists known about the custom – with an Italian tourist reportedly chased by a waiter in Saint-Tropez after he “only” left a tip of 500 euros (£429).
The fuming waiter cornered the man in the restaurant’s car park and told him that the minimum tip was a whopping 1,000 euros (£859).
A friend of the Italian told a local paper: “He thought he had been generous by leaving 500 euros, instead he was reprimanded.
“The waiter told him that it wasn’t enough and that he could still make a small effort to reach 1,000 euros – approaching 20 per cent of the total amount of his bill.”
Other restaurants in glitzy Saint-Tropez reportedly have a “minimum spend” of 1,500 euros per diner.
Elsewhere in the French Riviera, tourists claim that waiters have ordered them to spend at least 10,000 euros (£8,587).
It has also been claimed that restaurants blacklist customers who fail to meet the minimum spend or tip.
Saint-Tropez’s mayor Sylvie Siri summoned restaurant bosses for a dressing-down about the “extortionate” practice.
She said: “It is a practice similar to extortion, a form of racketeering.”
It comes after a family were left horrified when a restaurant in a tourist hotspot charged them £17 extra just to cut their birthday cake.
An Italian bar has added a bizarre extra charge to customers who want their sandwiches cut in half – and the owner has revealed the baffling reason behind it.