The takeaway from Italy

The Covid-19 pandemic has popularised food takeaways and home delivery. Work-from-home has made cloud kitchens ubiquitous, generating a new culinary vocabulary. In the midst of the current ‘takeaway’ phenomenon, I recall an interesting incident that happened more than 20 years ago.

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A group of us had gone to Italy for a medical conference. As the proceedings of the meeting would finish by late afternoon, we had ample time to explore Turin, the host city famous for the Shroud of Christ and the birthplace of Fiat.

On the very first evening, we decided to venture out close to the conference venue. It was a time when pizzas had not yet become popular in India. It was still the era before the European Union had been formed, and the currency of Italy was lira. We felt on top of the world when we realised that a hundred Indian rupees could be exchanged for 3,000 lira.

Loaded with lira notes, we took off looking for a place to eat and asked for directions to the nearest pizza outlet. It had a board at its entrance displaying the cost of different pizzas. At 3,000 lira, we found the price of a 9-inch vegetarian pizza enticing. Six of us ordered three pizzas with free lemonades.

The thin-crust, wood-fired pizzas with liberal toppings of sun-dried tomatoes, pickled olives and jalapenos on a sumptuous spread of creamy cheese were indeed a connoisseur’s delight. We had not tasted anything like that back home in Chandigarh. So we ordered another round of pizzas to savour the flavour of new toppings and authentic Italian herbs. Having eaten to our heart’s content, we pooled our share of liras and requested for the bill.

We were taken aback to see that the bill was exactly the double of what we had calculated. We requested to see the manager, who was the only one who could converse in English among the staff. After a lot of effort in translating the Italian word for ‘takeaway’, he was able to explain to us that the cost of each pizza was 3,000 lira for a boxed takeaway, but was 6,000 lira for a dine-in pizza! He also explained in broken English that this fact was mentioned in small print at the bottom of the board. We felt cheated, but grudgingly made the payment.

As we came out, we saw the adjoining shop selling ice-cream in exotic flavours. For the six of us, we ordered a tub of 1 litre of Mediterranean fig ice-cream for 5,000 liras. As we requested for six spoons, instead of wrapping up the tub, the salesgirl was astonished to know that we wanted it as a takeaway and not as dine-in.