• bstix
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    9 months ago

    I was at a Chinese restaurant on Rhodes about 15 years ago, where they served food windows update style.

    We ordered off some menu written in Chinese and Greek letters and in a probably wrongly translated German too, so we had no idea of what we actually ordered. Just accepting the terms, right?

    Then they started serving food.

    We ate through 3 dishes and was about being full thinking this was a great deal, but then they just served another meal, and like, okay… let’s have a taste, and then it just kept coming in table servings instead of individual servings. Every time we emptied a plate theyd bring in something else. We never asked them for anything though.

    A few servings in we realised how we’d misinterpreted the menu and said, ok enough is enough, and they were like “but you must have the dessert, it’s part of the price, you already paid” (we hadn’t actually paid then, but I suppose they meant"included") and so well we ate another three rounds of ice-cream, sugar-fried dumplings and fruit, to the point where I had to stand up and say “No more food! Please no more!”, and the waiter was “More food yes coming up!”. We stopped her and just stood up, throwing a bunch of money on the table according to our order and hoping it was enough. The waiter then came back with change.

    Microsoft wouldn’t return your change.

    Anyway… epilogue. I get it now. Chinese custom is to leave food when you’re done and an empty plate is a request for more. I was on Rhodes 2 years ago, and tried to find it again, but the restaurant seemed to be gone. There was a kebab shop instead.

    • bulwark@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Funny enough I had a very similar situation happen to me and a group of friends in Rhodes Greece, except at the end of the meal the bill came and it was exorbitantly expensive. We realized it was a scam but we were drunk and the food was really good so we payed and left.