Haunted restaurants are not shocking. Old restaurants, like old homes and castles, hold ghosts: Josephina’s Italian Restaurant in Denver is haunted by a depressed 1920s showgirl; Willow Steakhouse & Saloon, outside Stockton, Calif., is built on the site of an old collapsed mine, where dozens died (but never remained put); stories of mysterious drifters and disappearances have been attached to White Horse Tavern in Newport, R.I., since it opened in 1673; and frankly, if you own an old restaurant and it doesn’t boast occasional sightings of a ethereal lady in white at the top of the second-floor landing (a fairly common sighting), you’re lacking. But you know what is shocking?
Customers.
Frightening souls who demand, throw things, eat things they shouldn’t. New Orleans claims to be home to the most haunted restaurants in the United States. Gus Martin grew up there, studying under Paul Prudhomme. Three years ago he became executive chef at Muriel’s Jackson Square, a French Quarter favorite that lays claim to several ghosts, including Antoine, the ghost of a desperate man who committed suicide in the restaurant (on the second floor, of course). That said, Antoine is mellow. “But we do have challenging individuals who are customers,” Martin said. In particular, “people who drop drinks off our upstairs balcony and then the glass smashes onto the tables below.”
With that in mind, here are some of our favorite tables of terror:
THE HORROR!!!
Joanne Chang studied applied mathematics and economics at Harvard and is now the owner and chef of a successful chain of pastry shops, Flour Bakery + Cafe in Boston. With husband Christopher Myers, she also runs the Chinese restaurant Myers + Chang. As if that resume wasn’t frightening enough: “The biggest horror story I have, at the bakery at least, is from two or three years ago. I got an e-mail from this woman who said she came all the way from New Hampshire to get our sticky buns. We’re famous for our sticky buns. But we didn’t have any when she got here. So in this e-mail exchange she began accusing me of being immoral and manipulative, that I was clearly manipulating supply and demand by not offering them during peak business hours, that I was trying to drive up the price. None of this was true, of course. But we e-mailed back and forth and she continued to say I was unethical, a bad human. Finally, to put an end to it, I sent her a note saying, ‘Look, it’s just a sticky bun. This ends here.’ She apologized.”
SHOCKING!!!
Ming Tsai is a celebrity chef; his PBS series, “Simply Ming,” has been on for seven seasons. He’s also not immune from belligerent spirits: “I have one story that stands out. I had just opened Blue Ginger (in Boston) and these two ladies, maybe 55 or 60, loaded with plastic surgery, dressed more like 35, come in. They were used to a high lifestyle. Basically they ordered my waiters around like they were servants, and they were seated near the kitchen so I could see the whole thing. They ordered a salad and spent an hour and a half eating it, on a Saturday night. They were miserable and they made the tables next to them miserable. But the last straw was when they snapped their fingers at the waiter. I told them they don’t have to pay for the meal, but get out. Their Botoxed faces dropped. You’ve heard that people who have had a bad experience at a restaurant will tell 100 people? I think it’s safe to say those two didn’t know 100 people.”
GASP!!!
Aimee Olexy is owner of Talula’s Table, in Kennett Square, Pa., 45 miles outside Philadelphia, where she ran the well-regarded Django with her former husband: “OK, here’s one story for you. It’s a classic scenario but it happened: A couple is eating and it turns out the man is having an affair. He’s cheating. We find this out because the real wife comes in with her mom and sees them and it just gets horrifying. It turned into this huge shouting match. I didn’t know what was going on, until there’s this shock of what’s happening. And it was the whole deal: ‘I thought you were at work!’ Everything. The most uncomfortable thing you could witness.” (Please note: Talula’s has only 20 seats.)
ARGGGH!!!
Marcus Samuelsson, of New York’s Aquavit, Chicago’s C-House and soon-to-open Red Rooster in Harlem: “There’s not one bad customer in particular. But in the beginning of my career, and it happened often, people would ask me who the chef was. I would say, ‘I am.’ They would say, ‘No, really, who is it?’ They had never seen a black chef before, and it happened everywhere, even at a country club in Detroit. I laugh about it now.”
EGADS!!!
Mark Peel is executive chef of Campanile in Los Angeles, a former “Top Chef Masters” contestant and the original chef de cuisine at Spago. A lot of horror stories come to mind, he said, but here’s one: “Taking a phone call in a restaurant can be rude but this doctor came in (to Campanile) and said she was expecting an emergency call, so we understood. Anyway, the guest at the table beside her did not understand and after a few calls, he got so incensed that he stood up and pulled the phone out of her hand and wouldn’t give it back to her. He just refused to give it back. So she called the police. They came in and arrested him and led him out of the dining room, handcuffs and everything.”
EEEK!!!
Chris Prosperi’s ex-wife Courtney Febbroriello wrote a memoir about the restaurant life (“Wife of the Chef”), rich with customer horror stories. Prosperi (who also writes a recipe column for the Hartford Courant, a Tribune newspaper) runs the respected Metro Bis in Simsbury, Conn. His favorite table of terror: “This is kind of creepy, actually. A couple of years ago, we had a table of eight. There was a couple in the group we had never seen before. The guy tells our waiter he is allergic to nuts. The waiter said it wasn’t a problem. So anyway, dessert comes around. The wife orders hazelnut gelato. The waiter doesn’t say anything because he figures the wife knows what she’s doing. But the guy reaches over and takes a big scoop. He goes into anaphylactic shock. He thought she ordered coffee ice cream. The wife said she carries an EpiPen, but it turns out she left it at home. So he’s all laid out on the ground and the police arrive and they carry EpiPens and everything is fine. But we’re sitting around at the end of the night and it kind of bugs us: Was she trying to kill him? She ‘
always carries an EpiPen’
but not this time? The night she orders hazelnut gelato? Weird. We still talk about it. Scary, isn’t it?”
GREAT SCOTT!!!
Chef Michael Bulkowski returned to his hometown, Findlay, Ohio, in 2005. He opened Revolver, a true destination restaurant. He had clocked time with Wolfgang Puck and Emeril Lagasse and at the legendary Trio in Evanston, Il., but he was seduced back by the picturesque fields, the abundant sunshine, the wide-open spaces where children could play. There are days, however, when he wishes he never returned: “I had a customer who questioned the quality of my fish. It was extremely fresh. It had come in that day and I know fresh fish, but this guy was extremely unhappy. So I went out to the table and the language was just abusive: ‘This is (excrement). Just (excrement).’ I have never heard anything like that, so I went to the kitchen, comped the table then asked them to leave. That guy’s been back many times. I don’t like him but I take his money.”
NO!!!
Chef Greg Higgins didn’t understand what we were asking at first. He is one of the most respected names in Pacific Northwest cuisine; since 1994, he’s run the eponymous Higgins in Portland, Ore. Nevertheless (and with little encouragement), he began telling us about a large banana slug that recently crawled from one of his salads, alarming a customer. No, no, we said, a tale of horror perpetrated by a customer. Here’s what Paul Mallory, his co-owner, offered: “Eight years ago or so there was a car race series in town and we had a bunch of drivers in and there is no smoking but they didn’t like that. So they would sneak into the bathroom and smoke, plus they had a lot to drink so we cut them off, and they didn’t like that, either. So one of the drivers just grabs a magnum of wine from the bar, takes his girlfriend into the bathroom and they start smoking and drinking. So we banged on the door then kicked everyone out. That’s as bad as it gets.”
BOO!!!
Chef Chris Howerton of Corbett’s in Louisville offers more of a “customer’s misinterpretation from hell,” but we’ll take it! “I was 24, running my first kitchen, and we had some lobster dish. I decided I was going to fry the tentacles and put it on the plate as garnish. Guess what happened. This woman tried to eat it. I felt bad but why the hell would you eat fried tentacles? That was the last time I tried to offer an inedible garnish.”
