In the news last week, I saw that the pizza place San Marino, one of the favorite to order from where it’s located at Landås (and more recently Laksevåg), got busted for holding on to 53 kilos of hashish. It’s just one of the latest opus of San Marino’s criminal saga, which is quite entertaining to say the least!
San Marino, a pizza place specialized in delivery and famous for bringing you hangover food in Bergen suburbs from 2016, started to get negatively portrayed in the media in August 2022 when it was requested to close for one day due to hygiene concerns from the Norwegian Food Safety Authority. They reopened after spending just the one day cleaning, which was again published in the media.
This brings us to October, when the construction and building experts from the Bergen municipality who also participated in the inspection gave back a report stating that San Marino’s kitchen in Landås had been built illegally. Acoording to it, the change of use from a paint shop to a kitchen was never done legally, a wall that shouldn’t have been destroyed was, there were fire hazards AND, more sketchy here, the basement was, despite its official use as a storage room, used as an office and temporary residence.
San Marino’s first location was then fined 150.000 NOK (around 15.000 euros) and the use of the kitchen and basement were to cease from December 20, with a threat of definitive closure if no change was made to how the place was used by February 20. We didn’t hear so much from the case since then, so I was under the impression that it had closed for good and that there was no more to the story. How boy, was I wrong!
I had missed the info back at the end of November, too busy as I was working during the Julebord season at the restaurant. Basically, the police raided the same pizza place for storing illegal drugs, a seizure called « significant » by the police. Not much details filtered at that time, but the local media BT also stated that San Marino was not only in trouble for lack of hygiene and illegal construction, it was also targeted by another criminal case regarding illegal labor.
Turns out, it was 53 kilos of hashish! Two men had been arrested back then, one of them having pled guilty right away while the other still denies it, while the employer is not directly concerned by the justice. While it keeps the police busy, it shows how much can be expected from a pizza place in Bergen. On an local expats group I’m part of, people have been joking about the fact that the real crime is being stuck with even lesser quality pizza delivery places, while others have been wondering if Bergen is becoming the Florida of Norway.
Before we get the final who what how of the story, please enjoy a slice at home (or a whole pizza, I don’t judge)!
Meanwhile in Norway... 