There’s a Restaurant in Sicily Where You Decide How Much You Want to Pay

Alessandro Musso and Pierclaudio Ruta, two young Sicilian chefs, on the occasion of the opening of their restaurant Pensiero, decided to let customers choose how much to pay after eating. An initiative that was taken for the first three days of opening and that is based on the concept of "pay what you want", that is, pay as much as you want: a practice, this, already used often in other parts of the world. In this article we explain what the concept of pay what you want is and where it comes from.

First you Eat, Then You Pay (As Much As You Decide)

According to what was specified by the Sicilian chefs, at least for the first few days of opening, there will be no set price on the menu. In essence, it will be an invitation to participate in a gastronomic and cultural project aimed at enhancing the local ingredients of the great bread-making tradition of a territory with a strong cereal vocation. We are in fact in Val di Noto, an area in the south-east of Sicily that geographically includes the provinces of Ragusa, Siracusa and part of the provinces of Catania, Enna and Caltanissetta.

An idea that harks back to the concept of "pay what you want" that we mentioned above. Strange but true, there are actually restaurants in the world where the diner himself makes the bill at the end of the meal. But how exactly does pay what you want work? Basically, it is the customer who makes the bill based on some completely subjective criteria that concern different parameters: what and how they ate, the service in the dining room and many others.

What is Pay What You Want

There is actually no historical certainty about when restaurants thought of this or which one was the first to do it. According to various sources, however, it is something that dates back to the eighties when, in some places, it was the customers who decided the final bill. At this point you will be thinking that for restaurateurs this is a real harakiri. In reality, it is a tactic appreciated by customers who understand that they are not at soup kitchens or charity shops, but are called to reciprocate the trust given by the person who is hosting you for dinner.

The goal of restaurants that let the customer decide how much to pay is to put the idea of ​​conviviality at the center of meals. Places like this exist especially here, in the United States and Australia and their budgets do not suffer after giving "freedom" to customers. In some circumstances it seems that those who do not want to pay are free to do so but can "make up for it" by washing the dishes or slicing vegetables for the next service.