What’s a famous chef to do when an unhappy vegan customer makes herself an unrelenting migraine? Fed up, British-born Australian chef John Mountain told her and the rest of the vegan community to “go somewhere else” for dinner — but their beef hardly ended there.
Mountain is the well-known executive chef at Fyre, in the suburbs of Perth. He told Perth Now that “A young girl reached out to me and said she was coming to the restaurant… and asked if there were vegan options.” He explained that the lack of vegan options was his “only shortfall” at Fyre.
Nevertheless, Mountain told the woman that “I would accommodate her, I said we had gnocchi, vegetables… and that was that.”
That’s when things went south Down Under. Mountain had a private event to cater the night his vegan guest would be dining at Fyre, and he forgot to let his sous chef know ahead of time to have vegan selections ready. The sous chef — clearly embarrassed by his boss’s failure — even scolded Mountain for “not telling them about the vegan customer.”
The mistake was on Mountain, he apologized, and his sous chef did what he could to feed the finicky diner.
Later, the young woman became increasingly hostile in a series of Facebook direct messages with the restaurant. “I hope to see some improvements in your menu as I have lived in Connolly for quite some time and have seen many restaurants come and go from that building and none of them last,” she finally warned. “If you don’t get with the times, I don’t hold out faith that your restaurant will be the one that does.”
ASIDE: I don’t know about you, but I see a restaurant with a name like Fyre and I think MEAT. Just like when I see a restaurant called Daisy’s Farm-to-Table Turnip Emporium, I figure it’s a vegan place. So I make my reservation at Fyre and let the vegans do their thing at Daisy’s. But imagine the fuss if I even dared to inquire if Chef Zoey at Daisy’s would grill me up a ribeye on Friday night.
Soon, Fyre’s Facebook page was flooded with one-star reviews from likely fake customers:
“You can’t call yourself a chef if you can’t even cook veggies. Owner is very arrogant and can’t take criticism.”
“Extremely rude staff & disappointing & not up to par dishes.”
“Food tastes horrible. Chef is rude when queried. Will not go back.”
Finally, Mountain had enough: “F**k vegans seriously… I’m done. At the end of the day, it’s not what I want to do, they can f**k off.”
So I have nothing but empathy for Mountain when he announced that “Sadly all vegans are now banned from Fyre” — and this is the kicker — “for mental health reasons.” I assume Mountain is referring to his own mental health, after having had to deal with all those angry reviews, most of which were probably fakes. But my snarky side hopes that he was referring to the mental health of people who choose to avoid the omnivore diet that human bodies were built for.
What happened next warmed my heart to medium rare.
“As news of the ban spread,” according to Fortune, “a wave of support for the chef’s controversial stance has seen strangers come to the restaurant owner’s defense and flood social media platforms with positive reviews for Fyre.”
“I am lactose intolerant, and like an adult I didn’t eat dessert because it didn’t fit my dietary requirements. Perhaps other people with specific diets should do the same and act like adults?”
“Absolutely love the Menu at Fyre! Very BASED food and even more BASED staff.”
Fyre’s reviews, which had dipped to less than three stars under the vegan Facebook assault — hurting business — rose back up to a much more respectable 4.4 as meat-lovers came to its defense.
A notorious local animal rights activist named Tash Peters compared Fyre’s refusal to prepare vegan dishes to banning Muslims. “I don’t see it as any different to banning Muslims or women, it’s a blatant form of discrimination,” she said to a local news station. “Veganism is on the rise and places should really cater for everyone.”
Fine, honey. Grill me that ribeye.
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