Crazy restaurant review rows hard to stomach

MEMPHIS, Tennessee: An American restaurant is taking some heat after leaving combative messages against a customer who complained about seeing the owner’s naked child running around the cafe in Memphis. The bizarre incident is a contender for the bad customer review hall of fame – and the competition is steep, given how many weird customer- restaurant owner clashes there have been recently.

A woman named Chelsea Bartley left a two-star Google review of the Imagine Vegan Cafe, saying she was disturbed by a recent incident in which the restaurant owner’s “bare butt naked baby was running around, stood up on a table with its black theyre (sic) so dirty feet, and bent over to show me it’s...” She said the staff just laughed.

On their now-deleted Facebook page, the restaurant owner replied: “I am about to start calling out names and pictures of people who leave us bad reviews, especially when it deals with our children. You will no longer be allowed to come and dine at Imagine. Especially when you lie about our babies.”

Unsurprisingly, the restaurant’s page was flooded with, um, bottom-inspired reviews. Sample: “I was looking for microwaved vegan cuisine and baby (bottom) and I got it!.

Recently a Washington paper reported “Emma C.” complained about being overcharged for a drink by Nick’s Riverside Grill. The manager replied, saying Emma C. “lost control of (her) bowels”, and “our poor manager working that night was left to clean up your faeces”. The original poster wrote back, saying she was not the same party pooper.

In England, a Berkshire pub owner got angry after a customer left a one-star review. Owner Kiren Puri wrote: “You claim to be foodies. I have never met a self-professed foodie start his meal with a bowl of chips.”

In New Hampshire, a customer urged others to boycott a restaurant because her party was asked to stop singing Bohemian Rhapsody so loudly.

And there are other times when a restaurant owner has gone crazy after seemingly justified criticism.

When a customer of a Bondi Beach, Australia, restaurant described a cafe as, “Dirty. Ants. Burnt food. Extortionate prices”, the owner posted a lengthy, over-the-top screed that ended, “you just (expletive) on my art, in public”. – Washington Post