Entitled People·
THE ITALIAN GUEST
A Melbourne couple host a demanding guest from Bellagio who fixates on Italian food, sparking a string of complaints and mounting kitchen tensions.
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A week after flying in from Bellagio, Italy, a guest in one Melbourne home had already turned every meal into a fight, and then she told the host, flatly, to learn how to cook Italian dishes.
The poster says her husband's friend arrived expecting to be looked after, and at first the household tried. They cooked for her. They took her out. They kept trying to make her happy with Melbourne restaurants and home food, but nothing seemed to land.
Every outing came with a new complaint. Sushi? No. Thai food? No. Chinese food? No. Italian food, she insisted, was the only real option. So the couple took her to Italian places three days in a row.
That didn't work either.
At the table, she complained about the pasta, the cheese, and the wine. When the poster ordered a cappuccino at 4 p.m., the friend objected immediately: "we don't drink cappuccino after 12pm." The poster says she pushed back in the moment, basically saying she drank what she wanted, when she wanted.
The criticism kept coming.
At Coles, the friend complained there were not enough authentic Italian pastas and corrected the poster on how to say the names of pasta shapes. The poster, who says she is Asian and prefers spices and flavorful dishes, decided to cook at home instead.
That dinner went badly too.
The friend disliked the meal, said the house smelled bad because of fish sauce, and asked the husband to take her out for lasagna instead. When she got back, she told the poster to "learn how to cook Italian dishes." She also dismissed "fusion food" and said online recipes were "just stupid for straying away from the root."
By then, the poster had had enough.
She snapped and called the friend arrogant and obnoxious. She told her Italian food was not the best, and said she could go shopping for herself, cook it, and eat it alone. The friend burst into tears and left early.
Afterward, the husband stepped in. He said his friend is "set in her way" and doesn't travel much. He suggested the poster apologize, saying maybe she should "just say sorry to her just to smoother the situation."
The poster refused.