Sit down or stand up

by Vicky Gayle (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find United Kingdom

Our porcelain coffee cups and side plates being left on the counter instead of a table still wasn’t enough of a hint I’d be standing up to eat breakfast. “Oh, you can’t sit outside – it’s a different price,” the English-speaking Italian waiter politely informed me; pointing to my wandering friend, Bella, who I hadn’t seen leave my side. She’d hoped to feel the warmth of the emerging sun while drinking an espresso from what she’d excitedly sold to me as “Venice’s oldest café”. Rosa Salva bakery has been serving people for more than a century, but she was mistaken about it being the city’s oldest pasticceria. It is instead, one of the most historic, and somewhere which taught me to forego my British dining assumptions. I called Bella – still oblivious – back inside the narrow and overcrowded foyer, which was busier now than when we arrived. A must-visit for tourists, the unassuming café in the Castello area of Venice was lined with wall to wall temptation, perfectly cut crustless sandwiches and frittelle – the deep-fried pastry ball which emerged as my Italian favourite. But nearly ten minutes later, I’d still not had a bite. We ushered each other through the open archway and next door to the café’s only dining area, where just one table for two remained. I was convinced we’d interrupted a large family celebration of some kind, but there were no reserved signs to keep us out. We gently elbowed our way through the tables but created a fuss as we tried to make room. Anyhow, our dragging chair legs and clinking china hardly punctuated the cacophony of laughter and celebration around us. Though any excitement at finally being able to sample the recommended food on our plates, was short lived. “Ahh,” a waitress began. Now crouched down at the table, she paused before trying to explain how the rule-breaking-Brits hadn’t paid enough to sit down. We glanced back and forth between the crockery, each other and the confused, but apologetic waitress, trying to figure out how this could be. “But the coffee was served to us like this and not in a paper cup to take away – so where do we go?! We don’t understand.” Truth be told, we were interrogating our own logic as much as the waitress who looked at us like any other non-English speaker would. “Wait, I’ll –” she continued the rest on the move and pointing to the service area next door as she rushed off. Moments later, she returned with another waiter. One whose English compensated for our disappointing lack of Italian. Three “Ciaos” and more explaining later, he repeated: “If you want to sit, you have to pay more.” “Okay, but where do we eat this? Do we stand?!” “Yes! Yes, stand.” He wasn’t joking, but Bella and I most certainly were. Rosa Salva’s two-tier pricing wasn’t for ‘eat in or take out’ as we’re accustomed to in England, but ‘sit down or stand up’. Literally. Instantly, the overcrowding in the foyer made sense and when we returned to the spot we started at, we did so laughing in disbelief at how long it took for us to realise this old bakery’s novel way of serving guests. Had waiter number two never arrived, we probably never would have. Cold cappuccino downed in two mouthfuls, we left – frittelles in hand – to find somewhere, anywhere, that tables and chairs were included in a single menu price.