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Guests at Michelin-starred French restaurants are taking home far more than pleasant memories of fine dining.

Increasingly brazen customers have been helping themselves to cutlery, designer knives, candles, flower pots and even... toilet-roll holders, according to The Telegraph.

Chefs and restaurant owners say the disappearing inventory is costing them hundreds or even thousands of euros every year.

Romain Hubert, co-owner of Michelin-starred restaurant L’Emulsion and Lo Fieu, a Bib Gourmand-listed bistro in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, said: “Human nature is wonderful. I could write a book about all these thefts.

“Even before we received our Michelin star, someone stole our toilet-roll holder. And they didn’t simply take the holder itself — they unscrewed it along with the screws and wall plugs, leaving a bare patch of plaster on the floor.

“It wasn’t a piece of priceless gold antique or an exclusive work of art, but it was a perfect illustration of the depths of human stupidity.”

What are diners stealing most often?

Among customers’ favorite “souvenirs” are:

• Cutlery and knives: At Lo Fieu, diners have developed a particular obsession with the restaurant’s signature wooden-handled Opinel knives. The owners even tried to outsmart the thieves by attaching a locking ring so the knives could not be folded away and slipped into a bag. It didn’t work: during the first year, at least 40 of the restaurant’s 90 knives were stolen.
• Decorative items: Expensive candles from ladies’ rooms and hand creams have also disappeared. The restaurant eventually replaced tubes of hand cream with dispensers because the tubes were vanishing every two weeks. At one establishment in Isère, a diner even managed to empty the soil from a flower pot into the toilet before walking away with the pot itself.
• Bizarre incidents: One Dutch diner attempted to smuggle a water jug out of a restaurant by hiding it under his T-shirt. Meanwhile, five-star hotels reportedly lose around 100 bathrobes every year. During one particularly bad summer season, all 150 specially selected pool towels disappeared.

According to a recent survey by specialist culinary website bouillante.com, which polled 500 restaurant owners, 94% of respondents had experienced at least one theft.

The statistics also suggest that the more expensive and prestigious the establishment, the more likely it is to encounter light-fingered customers.

‘We are declaring war on thieves’

Laurent Lapeyre, owner of Michelin-starred Agapé in Paris’s 17th arrondissement, says he has been waging a “war” against restaurant thieves for 18 years.

The restaurant uses silver napkin rings that also double as knife rests, designed by Andrée Putman for Christofle and costing around €200 per set. Waiters always remove them before dessert to make sure none have disappeared.

“Unfortunately, these rings quite often end up in customers’ handbags ‘completely by accident’,” he said.

Lapeyre has a remarkably effective way of dealing with the problem.

“We simply add the missing item to the bill, and magically, the item is found. If someone tries to play dumb, I simply ask them to return ‘the souvenir the lady happened to leave in her handbag’.”

Adrian Descoul, manager of Michelin-starred restaurant Origines in Auvergne, encountered an even more brazen stunt.

A female diner got up from her table and helped herself to a designer knife from a neighboring empty table. When staff politely asked her to return it to the reception desk, she caused a scene.

“How dare you! This is outrageous!” she protested.

But after staff showed her CCTV footage of what she had done, the woman was forced to admit it.

Descoul showed little sympathy.

“I told her: ‘We asked you nicely, and you started making a scene, so now we’re filing a police report because our knives cost €210 each.’”

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