Wrong Red Hen: D.C. restaurant taking a lot of squawking

This has been a rough couple of days for the Red Hens of the world.

After White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was ousted from a restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, named Red Hen, unaffiliated businesses are finding themselves the unsuspecting victims in a national uproar over business and politics.

A Washington, D.C., hot spot in the quaint Bloomingdale neighborhood that goes by the same name was egged over the weekend and has been scrambling to clarify that it is not the Red Hen. A Red Hen restaurant in New Jersey is caught up in the tumult, as is the book publishing company Red Hen Press.

The three restaurants and literary press are completely unaffiliated. But that hasn’t stopped a backlash after the incident Friday at the rustic farmto-table eatery 200 miles from Washington when staff members called the owner at home to ask what to do after Sanders entered the restaurant

Since then, Red Hens everywhere have been bombarded with hundreds of Facebook comments, Yelp reviews and Twitter posts. And President Donald Trump didn’t make things any easier, tweeting Monday about the incident without clarifying the location.

The D.C. eatery has been trying to set the record straight even though Sanders clarified the location where she was evicted in her initial tweet. It’s having a little fun, too, firing back with GIFs and clever responses, largely to Twitter users who still don’t believe the two aren’t affiliated.

The D.C. restaurant is comparing the names of the Twitter users to that of other famous people to point out the flaw in the same-name argument. Red Hen Press joined in on Twitter as well. But the D.C. restaurant is taking its own heat from some people – for not taking a stance in the dispute.