Restaurant Toscanini has a request: go easy on the perfume
All dressed up, because you’re going out for dinner. Heels on, lipstick applied, and one last spritz of perfume. Left, right, a little more spray over your hair and wrists. There, that smells nice. But wait a minute—is all that perfume really as pleasant when you’re dining out? At the iconic Italian restaurant Toscanini in Amsterdam, they don’t think so. That’s why they’re asking their guests to take it easy on the perfume.
Toscanini is a household name in Amsterdam and the surrounding area. Chances are you’ve heard of or read about this Italian restaurant. At FavorFlav, for example, we regularly share Toscanini recipes; it has been one of our favorite Italian restaurants in Amsterdam for years.
Confirmation with a special request
Since November last year, your reservation confirmation has included a special request: ‘We want all our guests to have a wonderful experience, but excessive use of perfume can sometimes make that difficult. We would therefore kindly ask you to take this into account by using perfume a little more subtly.’
Perfume at a wine tasting: a killer
Actually, it makes perfect sense. For years, I wrote about wine professionally, and the number-one killer at every wine tasting was the perfume worn by fellow tasters. Especially when it involves heavy feminine fragrances or overpowering masculine scents. Just try writing a tasting note about your wine then. A cloud of perfume drowns everything out.
Chefs want to smell—but not your perfume
And the same applies when you’re eating, right? You want to smell what’s on your plate. In fact, the aroma is a preview of what’s to come. And being able to smell is at least as important to chefs. After a guest wearing too much perfume sat a little too close to the kitchen some time ago, distracting the chefs so completely that they could no longer even taste the ingredients, Toscanini had had enough. ‘We have nothing against perfume itself. But some people did go a little overboard with the spraying,’ co-owner Maud Moody told Het Parool.
Disruptive effect
Toscanini is not the first restaurant to ask guests to go easy on the perfume, by the way. Last summer, the upscale sushi restaurant Sushi Kanesaka in London made headlines around the world when it asked guests not to wear perfume at all. This was to ‘avoid disrupting the sensory experience of other guests’. At Toscanini, you’re still allowed to wear perfume—but not too much.
When is perfume too much? When it reaches beyond the people at your table.
Also read:
- Su filendeu is the rarest pasta in the world
- Italians furious—now at their fellow countrymen: that’s not how you cook pasta?!
- Toscanini recipe: Spaghetti with garlic, oil and chili pepper (spaghetti aglio e olio)
