Family dines-and-dashes from €7,000 restaurant bill in Spain after child’s huge birthday party

More than 80 guests, the open bar never stopped and the seafood kept coming, but when the bill for a five-year-old’s birthday came to €7,000, the entire family did a runner.

A deposit was paid, but nowhere near the final amount

Restaurant owner Carol Sao Luis had been expecting around 60 people when a mother came in to book her daughter’s fifth birthday party at Tropicaña, her restaurant in Culleredo, near A Coruña, in Galicia. A €500 deposit was paid in early August to secure the date.

By the day of the party, the guest list had swollen to more than 80. The order included seafood, grilled meat, an open bar for the adults, personalised bottles, a dessert table and inflatable castles for the children, according to a report by Infobae. The €500 deposit covered less than a tenth of the final total.

The excuse that arrived instead of the payment 

When staff asked for the bill payment at the end of the night, the mother said she had argued with her partner, who usually handled the family finances, and did not have the money to hand. She promised to send a bank transfer before morning.

That transfer, however, never arrived. Sao Luis said she chased the family repeatedly over WhatsApp in the days that followed, only for the tone of the replies to change. The mother eventually said she would pay only what she felt was fair, claiming the restaurant had not delivered everything that had been agreed.

Owner photographs number plate as family drives away

Sensing there was something more happening during the event’s abrupt ending and that the money may not arrive, Sao Luis photographed the registration plate of the family’s car as they left. “Seven thousand euros is a huge amount of money for a business like ours, and situations like this cannot be overlooked,” Sao Luis told Telecinco. The occurrence has since been coined “simpa of the century,” using the Spanish slang term for walking out on a restaurant bill. 

Guardia Civil now treating the case as possible fraud 

Sao Luis reported the family to the Guardia Civil and officers have since located the mother. The force has indicated the case could amount to fraud rather than a simple unpaid bill. The family has not commented publicly.

Unpaid restaurant bills aren’t uncommon in Spain, with many restaurants and bars having large terraces outside their main premises and more tables than the waiters working a shift can handle, some sneaky diners may find an opportunity to dash when workers are too busy to notice.

Anyone eating out with good intentions is generally advised to check what they’re ordering carefully before the bill reaches the point of not being able to be paid for, or the diner starts thinking of taking up a life of crime. For Tropicaña on the other hand, the dispute is now about whether the bill will end up being paid at all.