Chef bans vegans from restaurant: ‘Eat your crap somewhere else’
Chef John Mountain (born in England, living in Australia) has had it up to here with vegans. Because he loves meat. So much so that he wrote a cookbook about it, called ‘Pig’. And that’s why he also likes to serve it at his restaurant Fyre, in Perth. And from this week onwards, no vegans are welcome at that restaurant.
He announced this on the restaurant’s Facebook page. Just as an aside: this restaurant doesn’t have an official website and doesn’t even show up when I Google its address. That immediately makes me suspicious of a hospitality business, and I would be more likely to skip it. So before John starts banning people, he might want to invest in a website.
‘I am really he-really done with this!’
The proverbial final straw for this ban was a confrontation John recently had with a vegan at Fyre. This woman came to eat and had indicated in advance that she was vegan, but John had forgotten this — he was busy catering a private party. In a private message to Fyre, she wrote the following day: ‘My only option was a vegetarian dish… It was okay but not really filling… And I was shocked when I saw afterwards that it cost 32 dollars.’
Apparently, that was enough reason for John Mountain to ban all vegans, because how dare a guest give feedback when he himself had forgotten her dietary requirements? Yeah, sorry, but I find this such a twisted, over-the-top reaction. Fyre is also primarily a meat restaurant, so how many vegans would actually come there (voluntarily)? My guess is that this John mainly wanted to do it because of the publicity it would generate.
Lots of fake bookings
And it worked… But not quite in the way he had hoped. After this ban, Fyre had a lot of trouble with fake bookings from angry vegans, so the restaurant was fully booked but nobody showed up. Childish too, but John quickly had a solution for that: guests now have to pay a 30-dollar deposit, which is later deducted from the bill.
And his response to the woman who gave her unwelcome feedback? A direct quote: ‘F*cking vegans… They can f*ck off.’ John Mountain seems like such a fun, friendly guy.
Also read:
- Recipe: how to make the tastiest vegan shawarma from the book BBQ-tijd
- The sobering truth about vegan cheese
- I completely lose it when a vegan comes to eat
Image credits: Michael Wilson/The West Australian
