Well, not quite: It’s still perfectly OK to split the bill, but in many Belgian restaurants you won’t get any help from the owners, most of whom are insisting on “one bill per table.”
To counter complaints from customers who found themselves vainly waving multiple credit cards, the Horeca Vlaanderen hospitality association that represents many restaurants, has reminded restaurants to warn customers. The group says “Restaurant owners may ask their customers to pay the whole bill at once, but they must communicate this clearly on the menu or verbally in advance.”
This is a situation which belongs to the age of credit cards and electronic payment; when cash was the norm the problem did not exist. And the new age has another problem: many restaurants stopped giving receipts, a practice that also makes it harder to split the bill after—and it violates the law that requires a receipt, showing tax, be given.
