A scathing review of La Dolce Vita that will mortify ev…

Romantic evenings dining on some of the best cuisine in the world with charming Italian men, against a backdrop of rich history and culture – this is what Chelsea Arganbright expected when she first moved to Rome.

But in a scathing critique likely to incense proud Italians, the 36-year-old has revealed why her Dolce Vita dream turned out to be more of a living nightmare, where she was disappointed by the famous food, put off by the ‘clingy’ men and priced out by American tourists.

The luxury hotel branding designer originally from Londonhad been living in SydneyAustralia, but soon found herself bored of the ‘lack of culture and intellectual stimulation’ Down Under and decided to move to Europe.

But instead of returning to her hometown, Chelsea packed her entire life into three suitcases and applied for a Digital Nomad visa in Italywith Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday as her muse.

Yet the Italian capital largely failed to impress, delivering neither on the cuisine nor the suitors – while the number of American visitors that descend on the city each week also ruined the designer’s picturesque ideal.

Chelsea told The Daily Mail how ‘a lot of women get their hearts broken here, because they expect something different’.

She added: ‘I’ve known a lot of friends who had been excited about dating Italian men, and then they were very quickly put off.

‘People who move here will say they won’t even date Italian men anymore, they’ll just stick to other expats because when you’re on a dating app, and you start talking to someone, they expect you to be talking to them non-stop.

‘And then if you exchange numbers but don’t text them back within two hours they’re saying “What’s wrong? Where did you go? Are you not interested?”

‘In the UK, you’d be like, this guy is a stalker, or he has a problem. They can be charming, they’ll say all the right things, and then their interest might fade as quickly as it occurred. It’s love bombing and some gaslighting thrown in’.

Perhaps even more surprisingly, Chelsea found herself disappointed by Italy’s famous cuisine.

A lack of gluten-free options and poor variety of dishes also bored Chelsea, and even the country’s famous coffee couldn’t win her over.

‘I love matcha lattes and back in Sydney I’d get a matcha latte for $5AUD (£2.44) but here I’m paying €5 (£4.35).

A while Rome is widely considered a world-class food destination, Chelsea said the city didn’t have great restaurants and only ‘overpriced chains’.

She explained that her supermarket shop was ‘not that much cheaper than back in Australia’ and she felt that prices were hiked up because of the volume of tourists.

‘It depends where it is, but I felt some places boosted the prices quite a lot because they know the tourists come in,’ she said.

Chelsea also explained that she found the food was not only disappointing but not always suitable for her gluten and dairy-free diet.

She described trying to eat traditional Roman dishes like cacio e pepe almost impossible.

‘It’s not easy, to find good quality, authentic food. It’s almost impossible to find those two things together.’

‘I would love to just go out and find a piece of fish or a piece of chicken but they’ll (restaurants) add cheese to everything and I just want something healthy so I end up cooking at home a lot and then going out for lunch and drinks’.

Alongside the disappointing dating scene and food, Chelsea described her rent and bills as ‘a bit of a surprise’, and was left shocked at her rent of €1,550 (£1,346) per month in total for a two-bed flat in the Monteverde area of Rome.

In Sydney, the brand expert had been paying roughly $1,600 AUD, the equivalent to €893 (£775) for her flat and was shocked to pay more than double in the Italian capital.

‘It definitely added up. I ended up having to get a housemate. I’d never had a housemate before, so that was an interesting experience in itself,’ she said.

Chelsea began sharing her apartment with an Italian man but instead of a steamy summer fling, she found he rarely helped around the house and was so messy she avoided him at all costs.

She said: ‘It was so frustrating, because with older Italian men, they are still very much stuck in the mindset that cleaning is a woman’s job, so that was very difficult, because I’d clean the floors, and there were really heavy boot marks in there all the time, all over the bathroom, the kitchen, everywhere.

‘Finally I said “please can you help clean” but he would just say “that wasn’t me, I wouldn’t do that”, but I have a Japanese policy indoors, so I don’t even wear my shoes.

‘He kept denying it, and finally he did do the floors, but then he ended up skipping out on the move-out clean, he just cleaned his dishes and thought that was enough.

‘I wanted an Italian person because I thought it was going to help me learn the language, but in the end, I just tried to avoid him at all costs.’

Chelsea found her encounter with an Italian housemate so frustrating she has vowed never to move in with anyone again and as soon as she could, she relocated.

She said: ‘I will not ever be living with a housemate again. But it was a good situation, because it allowed me to learn a lot about navigating aspects of the culture.’

The luxury hotel brand strategist was also surprised by the salaries in Rome and said she had been more financially stable in Sydney and London.

‘I think, given the cost of living, it’s quite expensive here,’ she said. ‘In Sydney paying that low amount for rent, it was great. And in Rome, there’s less opportunities locally to make money.’

As a result of the changes in personal finances, Chelsea confessed she’d had to make several sacrifices including giving up her gym membership and personal trainer.

She said: ‘I’m very much in to health and wellness but my own wellness has probably gone down a bit because I haven’t been able to afford that sort of thing.

‘In Sydney I would go to the chiropractor twice a week, go to a PT once or twice a week, get a remedial massage every ten days.

‘At this point in time, it’s not doable in Italy for me, because that financial stability, isn’t there.’

Chelsea added that she had managed to find a gym in Rome that catered for the kinds of classes she liked but found she was paying West London prices for poorer services and didn’t feel it was value for money.

The brand expert also said the work culture was a shock to her as she described a lack of organisation.

‘In Australia everything is laid back, it’s super cruisy but organised but here it’s laid back and disorganised,’ she said.

‘People might make plans and then they fall through or you go to a work lunch that goes on for three hours and then I’ve scheduled back to back meetings and at 3pm I have to cancel them because the lunch is still going and I can’t leave because we’ve hardly talked about what we’re actually supposed to be talking about.

‘The warmth and connection is lovely but at the same time, I don’t have time to be doing this – the number of times I’ve said “oh God! I don’t have time for this!” – it’s been quite a lot.’

She added: ‘The same things that make the country so wonderful and people so engaging are the same things that make it really frustrating at times.’

Chelsea revealed she couldn’t stand the tourists either, complaining of the number of American visitors that descend on the ancient Italian capital every week.

She said: ‘When you’re trying to get about in the centre of Rome and there’s hordes of American tourist groups they can be unaware of their surroundings and the European way – moving around the space and taking up space and it’s quite different with Brits.’

Chelsea added that she struggled to find cafes and restaurants that were authentic, affordable but still luxurious and found there simply weren’t that many.

She posted in a Facebook group asking for recommendations and found that none of the 5,000 members had any to add to her list.

She said: ‘I’m always struggling to figure out where to go, it’s absolutely ridiculous, we’re in the middle of Rome, why should this be a struggle to try to find somewhere?

‘There’s only two places to get a good acai bowl. So when I want to catch up (with a friend), we end up just having an acai bowl in a little place by her which is still quite touristy.

‘There’s nowhere like in London. I could name you a billion places that I’d love to go to that are so lovely there. But here it’s very touristy, so it means that all the prices are quite hiked up and the quality is not great.’

She added that she missed her favourite London eateries and brands and said she hadn’t managed to find anything as delicious as Farm Girl in Notting Hill, noted for its smoothies and ‘healthy’ brunches.

She said: ‘There’s only a handful of places but nothing like Farm Girl in Notting Hill. Notting Hill Coffee Project, I miss that so much.

‘Those little places that are independent and really cute and feel good to be in, it’s really hard to find that in Rome, so I think I miss that a lot.’

Other cafes Chelsea missed were Megan’s on the High Street and Ottolenghi as well as Michelin-starred restaurants including CORE by Claire Smyth.

Although Chelsea was far from impressed with Rome’s restaurant and bar offerings, she conceded that their supermarket produce was delicious and good quality.

‘The ingredients that you can find are beautiful, canned fish, olives, all that produce is really good quality, it’s really lovely,’ she said.

But Chelsea did have some positive experiences and said she found the locals friendly and open and even though she was far from fluent, she managed to get by.

‘The nice thing about Italians is that if you try to say two words in Italian and they know you’re a foreigner, then they’ll say “oh thank you, you’re so good with your Italian”.

‘You don’t even have to try, they’re so lovely about it. Not knowing the language is such a non-issue,’ she said.

For Chelsea’s next move, she is considering northern Italy or somewhere closer to the Swiss border to take advantage of their more structured culture.

‘I loved Australia, it’s very remote worker-friendly and laid back and you can have an easy life and make a lot of money but it doesn’t have the history and the depth of connection.

‘I missed the culture and the intellectual stimulation of Europe but I knew I didn’t want to go back to the UK,’ Chelsea explained.