re: No tipping - one thing the Europeans have right

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I just wish one had the balls to say something one of these days so I can use my line: “this ain’t a charity.”

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I remember as a kid we at a restaurant in Lake Pontchartrain where the service was terrible so my dad left a sub par tip. Waitress saw it and mumbled thanks a lot as we started to leave. My dad turned around said you're lucky I left that as he picked up her tip and put it back in his pocket before walking off.

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I think it's more that it's considered rude to interrupt you as opposed to just being neglectful. The pace is much slower than in the U.S., so just raise your hand when they walk by and they'll come over...eventually.

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Fully agree that it was most likely a cultural difference since it was at most restaurants.

Trust me I know how to get a waiters attention, the restaurant where we got up and left they were flat out ignoring us because they were more concerned with cleaning the floors and tables that had no patrons than bringing us our check. We asked one waitress if she could have our server bring us our check she said ok and went back to sweeping the floors. That's when we got up and left.

My whole point is that in my opinion the European model is not better than here and I'm not a big fan of the way it is here either.

I lived in Italy for a long time. Honestly, it's about like the US in terms of certain restaurants having great service, others average, some bad.

There's a lot more mom and pop type smaller restaurants there were the owners are actually working and the rest of the staff are family.

The main difference pertaining to tipping culture is there's not as much effort on the part of waiters to seem outgoing and available unless it's in the smaller spots where the owners are there talking to everyone.