It's eight o'clock inside a traditional restaurant in Via de' Coltelli in central Bologna. Customers arrive punctually to be seated at one of the six available tables. Faced with the resurgence of Covid-19 in Italy, this Bolognese osteria is doing something different. The ebb of the first wave and summer al fresco dining saw an encouraging return to business for many Italian eateries and bars; but as the cold sets in, this second wave in is forcing restaurateurs to find new ways to stay afloat. New national restrictions mean restaurants and bars have to close by midnight until 13 November and can seat a maximum of six people per table. From Thursday night, the northern region of Lombardy is imposing a full curfew from 23:00 to 05:00 and, further south, the regions of Campania and Lazio follow suit the next day. 'One hour is for hungry people in a hurry' Vagh in ufezzi is a simple restaurant with paper place mats and no cover charge. Until two weeks ago, diners would have paid for each dish they ordered; now they are paying by the hour. "We needed to find a new formula otherwise we wouldn't have managed to stay open beyond Christmas," says Antonella De Sanctis, who serves the food that her husband, Mirco Carati, cooks. A table costs €18 (£16.50; $21) per person for one hour, and €26 for two hours, excluding wine, liqueurs and coffee. "You can go through the menu if you don't get lost in chit chat," says Mirco. "One hour is for hungry people in a hurry, two hours becomes a normal dinner." The couple were inspired by stories Mirco had heard as a child about post-war Bolognese osterie a tempo, where poor people could order "10 minutes of pasta and beans". The less time you spent, the less you paid - a way of both satisfying and serving a lot of people. With mandatory distancing measures, their restaurant has gone from being able to seat 25-30 to just 15-16. But, as Antonella points out, expenses like rent and utilities remain the same. "We didn't want to double our prices because it wouldn't have been fair on our clients: to suddenly find the same dish at twice the price because we'd halved the number of covers. So we found an idea that would allow our business to remain open."