nives, candles, a toilet roll holder complete with screws and Rawlplugs – that's just some of the stuff Michelin-starred restaurants in France complained about clients nicking in a recent news report. I'm not sure why the screws were presented as the ultimate absurdity – if you want to use your stolen toilet roll holder, you'll need them – it's just common sense!
A Québécois restaurateur complained about similar thefts in July – a picnic table, a painting and even the thermostat had been pinched – and British restaurateurs confirm it happens in the UK, too. Jan Ostle of Wilsons in Bristol told the BBC's World at One that the mother-of-pearl spoons he uses to serve herb sorbet are a particular target: "Every few months I have to buy another 28."
It's an age-old, frequently aired story – all down to a sense of entitlement, or the desire for a souvenir, or booze-fuelled bravado – but it seems awfully retro. Wasn't trousering a Conran restaurant ashtray a quintessential 90s petty crime? We're supposed to be into "experiences, not things" now, and isn't the whole point of posting a boring Instagram carousel of seven badly lit to show everyone you've been somewhere fancy without stealing a side plate?
But our basest instincts are still seemingly awoken by tableware in a hospitality setting: a survey by catering equipment supplier Nisbets found 27% of British adults had nicked something from a restaurant or pub. I'm not above such crimes: there's a dinky spoon in the drawer here we definitely didn't buy. It must have arrived nefariously, but I just don't remember when or how (exactly what a criminal would say). We also eat our dinners off Quick trays my husband may have liberated from the Belgian fast-food chain in the 1980s.
What can restaurateurs do? Some have tried putting price tags on stuff, confronting suspected spoon smugglers (chef Tom Aikens caused a kerfuffle doing this to a customer in 2012), and even amnesties (Mexican chain Wahaca promised free tacos to customers who returned its covetable brightly coloured spoons).
The boring solution is passing on costs with higher prices; my (marginally) more fun suggestion is bringing back branded matchboxes and matchbooks, which were a colourful, legit way to brag you'd been somewhere. They'll need to tell clients they're forbidden to take them, though – it's all about the thrill, not the thing.