A British Asian woman has accused a Parisian themed chained restaurant of “racism” after being denied a table when they showed-up despite there being several empty tables.<\/p>\n
A staff member at the C\u00f4te Brasserie in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, told them they operated on a \u2018reservations only\u2019 basis during a busy Mother’s Day service.<\/p>\n
Fatima Rajina and a friend phoned the restaurant using a \u2018white accent\u2019 to try and book a table, they were told one would be available in 15 minutes.<\/p>\n
PHD student Fatima, took to Twitter to vent about their treatment.<\/p>\n
She posted: “So, a friend and I just got turned away from Cote Brasserie in Welwyn Garden City. The waiter said it\u2019s reservations only, but my friend and I knew there was more to the story.<\/p>\n
“We saw empty tables for two around the restaurant. However, we walked out, and he decided to call \u2018em up.”<\/p>\n
A spokesman for the restaurant said it was “saddened” by the event but “strongly deny that there is a policy to refuse guests a table on any basis other than the restaurant being full.”<\/p>\n
Her post was retweeted nearly 3,000 times within 48 hours – with many commenting about their own experiences.<\/p>\n
Fatima was visiting the town for the first time, says she and a friend were left\u201d upset\u201d and \u201cangry\u201d when they were refused a table by a waiter at the Howardsgate restaurant on Sunday 11 March.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe turned up and a woman told us to wait a moment at the door, before a white waiter came up and said, \u2018sorry we only take reservations\u2019 \u2014 no hello, no nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
She continued: \u201cAs we were walking away my friend turned to me and said \u2018do you think we just got rejected because of our skin colour?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just felt that was the case, but we wanted to put it to the test.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe called up and put on the poshest accent he could and said \u2018hello we are really interested in booking a table for Mother\u2019s Day, do you have a table?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd they were very polite and said they could offer us one in 15 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe confronted the staff, and said, \u2018well why wasn\u2019t I offered one when I was in the restaurant ten minutes ago?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cShe got really flustered and said if we came straight away she would give us one but obviously we said \u2018well we don\u2019t want the table now\u2019 and told her that we would be taking it further.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the phone call we just got in the car and felt so upset, so we just went back to Luton and ate there.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt reminded me of things when my parents were young, when there used to be signs on restaurants saying ‘no Irish, no blacks, no dogs.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a lived reality for a lot of ethnic minorities but when it happens it still stings, it hurts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fatima\u2019s friend, who does not wish to be named, worked in Welwyn GC for five years previously, and said it was the first time he had ever had a problem.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old Hitchin resident, whose family is of a Pakistani background, said: \u201cWe walked in and for the first two to three minutes we were ignored then one of the men came out, looked us up and down and said \u2018it\u2019s reservation only and we\u2019re fully booked’.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt uncomfortable at first as it was quite abrupt and afterwards I just felt disgusted \u2014 Fatima had to stop me going back.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I confronted them on the phone I said, \u2018I\u2019m smartly dressed, I\u2019m a professional guy, did you just not give me a table because of the colour of my skin?\u2019 She just hung up.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many other people would have had this before and said nothing or not been able to stand up for themselves?<\/p>\n
The pair have left reviews describing their experience on TripAdvisor, Google and Facebook, while Fatima says she wants an apology from the company.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old said: \u201cI\u2019d like a public apology for how we were treated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m aware that Welwyn and Hertfordshire as a whole is predominantly white, so I don\u2019t know if its a lack of training or what but I\u2019d recommend better training.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they would only say something because it\u2019s gone public but of course I also expect that franchises like Cote are probably not that fussed about ethnic minority customers as we\u2019re not their base.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think they particularly would care about us essentially.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cYou can see from the reaction to my tweet that this kind of thing is not an anomaly, it happens to other people.<\/p>\n
A spokeswoman for C\u00f4te Brasserie said: \u201con Mother\u2019s Day, we had our busiest day ever, serving a record number of guests.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was regrettable that being so busy we had to turn away a number of people who had not made a booking.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are saddened to hear that someone who was turned away, felt dissatisfied as a result.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt C\u00f4te Brasserie we are proud to be an equal rights employer, counting over 120 nationalities amongst our team members.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a strict zero tolerance policy against any form of discrimination, whether it be amongst our team or towards our guests.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe strongly deny that there is a policy to refuse guests a table on any basis other than the restaurant being full.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs such, we are taking this allegation very seriously and have also reached out to the guest in question to discuss the matter further.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A British Asian woman has accused a Parisian themed chained restaurant of “racism” after being denied a table when they showed-up despite there being several empty tables. A staff member at the C\u00f4te Brasserie in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, told them they operated on a \u2018reservations only\u2019 basis during a busy Mother’s Day service. Fatima […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,53,3,112],"tags":[898],"class_list":["post-25999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","category-latest","category-news","category-top-stories","tag-british-asian-woman-accused-restaurant-of-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}