Stay frosty: A Spanish restaurant charged a customer €3 for extra ice — and it isn’t the only restaurant to tack on these extra fees

Greece, Italy also charging extra

If you’re planning to go on a European adventure, you may want to budget for extra or hidden fees.

dk Oyster, a touristy bar and restaurant in Mykonos, Greece, receives an average rating of 2 out of 5 on Tripadvisor. Many of the over 1,900 reviews detail the surprise charges and overpriced drinks at the restaurant.

“Don’t get sucked in by the ‘free’ drink,” one recent review read. “Total overcharge and even worse they tried to add hundreds more to our charge after we left. We are currently disputing this as fraud.”

This has also happened in Italy. Bar Pace, a restaurant near Lake Como, charged a customer 2 Euros to cut their sandwich in half, according to a since-deleted Tripadvisor review.

“We would have explained to him that each additional service must be paid for," Bar Pace owner Cristina Biacchi told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, in Italian. “We had to use two plates instead of one and the time to wash them doubled, and then two placemats.”

If you’re planning to go to a touristy spot, make sure to read the reviews of restaurants before you go. Other customers can warn you about establishments that overcharge tourists for their drinks and food.

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Restaurant prices are going up everywhere

European restaurants aren’t the only ones that are adding surprise fees to their bills. Some people argue that American restaurants have been doing this in the form of tipping.

A 2023 Pew Research Center study discovered that 72% of American adults believe that tipping is more expected now than it was five years ago. Of the nearly 12,000 people surveyed, 29% think tipping feels more like an obligation than a choice.

A Los Angeles-based influencer, who goes by the usernames @ZeroDollarsTips on Instagram and @IDontTip on TikTok, decided to fight the pressure to give gratuities by living a no-tip “lifestyle”. According to a video of his, he saved $152.92 by not tipping for two weeks.

“It’s not okay to put the responsibility of paying [the] waiter’s salary on the customer,” ZeroDollarsTips, a former waiter himself, told the food blog, L.A. Taco. “It’s time for change.”