Full meals are often elaborate affairs, generally served in either a trattoria or a ristorante . Traditionally, a trattoria is a cheaper and more basic purveyor of homestyle cooking ( cucina casalinga ), while a ristorante is more upmarket, with aproned waiters and tablecloths, though these days the two are often interchangeable. The main differences you'll notice now are to do with opening times: often trattorias, at least in rural areas, will be open at lunchtime - there won't be a menu and the waiter will simply reel off a list of what's on that day. In large towns both will be open in the evening, but there'll be more choice in a ristorante, which will always have a menu and sometimes a help-yourself antipasto buffet. In either, pasta dishes go for around £8000-10,000/?4.13-5.17, and there's usually no problem just having this; the main fish or meat courses will normally be anything between £10,000/?5.17 and £15,000/?7.75.

At the end of the meal ask for the bill ( il conto ); bear in mind that almost everywhere you'll pay a cover charge ( coperto ) on top of your food of around £3000/?1.55 a head. In many trattorias this doesn't amount to much more than an illegible scrap of paper; if you want to check it, ask to have a receipt ( ricevuta ), something all bars and restaurants are legally bound to provide anyway (indeed they - and you - can be fined if you don't take the receipt with you and the same applies to shops and bars). In more expensive places service ( servizio ) will often be added on top of the cover charge, generally about ten percent. If service isn't included you can choose to tip about the same amount, but unless you're particularly pleased with the service it's common just to leave a few coins.

Other types of eating places include those that bill themselves as everything - trattoria ristorante-pizzeria - and perform no function very well, serving mediocre food that you could get at better prices elsewhere. Look out also for spaghetterias, restaurant-bars which serve basic pasta dishes and are often the hangout of the local youth. Osterie are common too, basically an old-fashioned restaurant or pub-like place specializing in home cooking, though some extremely upmarket places with pretensions to established antiquity borrow the name. In our listings, we've indicated the regular weekly closing day .

Traditionally, a meal (lunch is pranzo , dinner is cena ) starts with antipasto (literally "before the meal"), a course generally served only in ristoranti and consisting of various cold cuts of meat, seafood and various cold vegetable dishes. Prosciutto is a common antipasto dish, ham either cooked ( cotto ) or just cured and hung ( crudo ) and served alone or with mozzarella cheese. A plateful of various antipasti from a self-service buffet will set you back £8000-10,000/?4.13-5.17 a head, an item chosen from the menu a few thousand less.

The next course, il primo , consists of a soup, risotto or pasta dish, and is followed by il secondo - the meat or fish course, usually served alone, except for perhaps a wedge of lemon or tomato. Watch out when ordering fish, which will either be served whole or by weight: 250g is usually plenty for one person, or ask to have a look at the fish before it's cooked. You may need quite an appetite to tackle all three courses; those on a budget will fill up best with just pasta, though portions can be quite small - in most places to it's fine to eat just a pasta course and nothing else.

Vegetables or salads - contorni - are ordered and served separately, and sometimes there won't be much choice: potatoes will usually come as chips ( patate fritte ), but you can also find boiled ( lesse ) or roast ( arrostite ), while salads are either green ( verde ) or mixed ( mista ).

If there's no menu, the verbal list of what's available can be bewildering; if you don't understand, just ask for what you want. Everywhere will have pasta with tomato sauce ( pomodoro ) or meat sauce ( al ragù ). Afterwards you nearly always get a choice of fresh fruit ( frutta ) and a selection of desserts ( dolci ) - sometimes just ice cream or macedonia (fresh fruit salad), but often more elaborate items, like cassata (ice cream made with ricotta) or zuppa inglese (spongecake or trifle). Sadly, the indulgent dessert of zabaglione is rarely available at any but the most upmarket places.

Italy isn't a bad country to travel in if you're a vegetarian , but unless you're determined you can end up eating endless plates of pizza and pasta with tomato sauce. There are, however, other pasta sauces without meat, some superb vegetable antipasti and if you eat fish and seafood you should have no problem at all. Salads, too, are fresh and good.

The only real difficulty is one of comprehension: Italians don't understand someone not eating meat, and stating the obvious doesn't always get the point across. Saying you're a vegetarian ( Sono vegetariano/a ) and asking if a dish has meat in it ( c'è carne dentro? ) might still turn up a poultry or prosciutto dish. Better is to ask what a dish is made with before you order ( com'è fatto? ) so that you can spot the non-meaty meat. Vegans will have a much harder time, though pizzas without cheese ( marinara - nothing to do with fish - is a common option) are a good standby, vegetable soup is usually just that and the fruit is excellent.

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Italy food and drink
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