The owners of the kosher restaurant in Rome's Jewish Ghetto – a historic quarter in the centre of the city – were surprised when Mr Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan walked away without leaving a gratuity.
Their bill came to just 32 euros after a lunch consisting of deep-fried artichokes – a Roman Jewish speciality – fried pumpkin flowers and ravioli stuffed with sea bass and artichokes.
Instead of wine or beer they opted for a bottle of water and a pot of tea.
Waiters at Nonna Betta, which specialises in Roman Jewish cuisine, were amazed by Mr Zuckerberg's parsimony, not just because of his huge wealth but because of Americans' reputation for tipping generously, as is expected of them at home.
It was not a case of not enjoying the meal, said the owner of the restaurant.
"I asked him 'how was it?' and he said 'very good'", the owner, identified only as Umberto, told Corriere della Sera newspaper. "I had gone up to him and said 'Are you ...?' and he said 'Yes'."
It was not the first time that the multi-billionaire chose not to tip – he reportedly did the same thing the night before at Pierluigi, a historic trattoria near Campo de' Fiori, a piazza in the heart of Rome.
The couple's honeymoon was a closely guarded secret until a Polish tourist spotted them in the Sistine Chapel, snapped a blurry photograph, and posted it on Twitter – Facebook's social network rival.
True to his casual style, the young internet tycoon was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and trainers.
They left Rome on Monday, with speculation that they might be heading towards the Amalfi Coast south of Naples before heading back to the US.
Mr Zuckerberg, 28, whose shares in Facebook are worth nearly $20 billion, married his long-time girlfriend on May 19 in Palo Alto, California.
Their wedding took place a day after Facebook's initial public offering on the NASDAQ stock exchange.
The couple had planned the exchange of vows for four months, but surprised their guests, who thought they were to celebrate Miss Chan's recent graduation from medical school, a celebrity magazine reported.
Mr Zuckerberg, Time magazine's Person of the Year in 2010, started Facebook in his Harvard University dorm room eight years ago, before dropping out of the Ivy League school.
Ms Chan just graduated from medical school at the University of California, San Francisco. The couple met while at Harvard.
Money can't buy class.
Every time I see this guy's mug in the news I feel like kncoking his teeth down his throat - Now I know why.
Your collective inability to acknowledge this obvious truth makes you all look like fools.
Perhaps it was a commentary on the service. For a city that lives on tourism, Rome's service staff are not exactly known for falling over themselves to show their customers a good time.
"If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu."
If the custom of the country is "no tip" then he was just conforming to the stds of behavior determined by the people of Rome. If Romans want to encourage tipping then they will have to start tipping themselves.
And I've heard from several recent visitors to Italy that the food was not very good and the service lousy. Which is odd because the Italians working in restaurants in London were all very good.
Service compris (or whatever the Italian equivalent is)?
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, paraphrasing Sarah Moore Grimké
Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm sure youns will), but tipping in Italy and in Western Europe are not at all like what they are in the U.S. and that other country up north of here. Waiters are paid well, and do not rely on tips for any significant part of their income. They have come to expect tips from Americans, but that's only because many of us are ignorant of the prevailing wage structure and customs. It's one thing to feel obligated to tip someone who is making a buck an hour, and not a beneficiary of our minimum wage laws, and quite another to feel obligated to tip a "professional" waiter who is well-into the working class, based on his wages.
Service in Italian restaurants is not "terrible," although it seems like it to Americans. It is not at all unusual to be ignored by a waiter for 20 minutes between servings, but that is because they consider a dinner out to be something that should last at least an hour, probably more. And the restaurant is not pushing them to get people in and out, so they can seat more people in a given night.
An Italian under the same circumstances might have left one or two Euros. What's the big deal?
Guinevere wrote:Service compris (or whatever the Italian equivalent is)?
There are certainly a lot of restaurants in Italy that do this. Hard to know whether that was the case here (although odd that they would felt the need to complain about it if it was).
dgs49 wrote:Service in Italian restaurants is not "terrible," although it seems like it to Americans.
Actually service in Rome is notoriously bad even according to Italians from elsewhere in the country. Again, can't say anything about the specific restaurants involved, but only what is generally heard from non-Romans who have experienced it.
"If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu."
I did a search in Rome's two most important dailies - Il Messaggero and La Repubblica - and while the Italian press appears to be giving a blow by blow description of the Zuckerbergs' every move while in Italy, no one seems to be talking about the tip thing, suggesting it is not seen as any sort of an issue locally.
"If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu."
I suppose what chapped my hide is that while working my way through undergrad, I worked as a room service waiter and being stiffed by those who ordered room service was beyond the pale.
Plus, I think Zuckerberg looks like a dweeb.
Your collective inability to acknowledge this obvious truth makes you all look like fools.
A Saudi princess was caught trying to leave the Shangri-La hotel in Paris without settling a six million euro ($7.7 million) bill for her rooms, police said on Saturday, confirming a report in the daily Le Parisien.
Maha al-Sudani, the former wife of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Nayef ben Abdel Aziz, tried to walk out at 3.30am on Thursday without paying for her suite and those of her 60-strong entourage, prompting staff to call in police, Le Parisien reported.
The Saudi Arabian ambassador was also contacted during the incident, added Le Parisien, which noted that Sudani enjoys diplomatic immunity.
When contacted by AFP, the luxury hotel's director Alain Borgers said that that are "no problems" with its clients and "no unpaid bills" at the moment.
The princess has already had previous run-ins over unpaid bills. In 2009, fashion chain Key Largo went to court to obtain 89,000 euro owed by the princess.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
