Costa del Sol restaurant's brilliant response to customers who weren't charged for paella goes viral on social media

A fish restaurant in the El Palo district of Malaga city has gone viral on social media after customers contacted them to try and pay for a paella that was missed off the bill. The customers, who numbered 12 people in total, paid the bill but at the time thought it was very cheap.

"We paid and left. The next day we commented that it had seemed very cheap, we checked the bill and saw that we had not been charged for one of the paellas for six people," explained one of the customers in a message shared on his 'X' account under the name Soy Camarero (@Soycamarero).

The customer decided to contact the restaurant to try and pay for the paella and the response from the Narval restaurant, where the error had happened, was as follows: "Don't worry about the cost of the paella. We need more honest people like you. Please help someone in need if you feel like it, if it is no trouble for you. We will be happy to welcome you back to the restaurant another day."

This response caught the customer completely by surprise, who decided to share what happened on social media to give visibility to the good will of the restaurant. "I haven't seen such human values for a long time... apart from how good the food is," said the customer. And the story has not taken long to go viral, with more than 220,000 shares and nearly 1,000 'likes'.

"It was only a paella for six people so I thought it was better if they could help someone who really needed it," Manuel Belmonte, who owns the restaurant together with his brother Marcos, explained to SUR. For Manuel his gesture "shouldn't be so special" because it was "something spontaneous". He went on to say, "The customer gave us a review on Google and I thanked him. Then he took it upon himself to spread the word and it has had a lot of repercussions."

The restaurant owner admits that he did not expect the message to go viral. And although he is "happy" to see people's responses, he admits that he has not stopped to read all the messages of affection because he is "a bit shy", adding, "It's easy to give a 'like' but it's harder to really help".