A UK Jewish family was told to leave a British tearoom with a 1940s theme after requesting that their meals not be served with chicken because they kept kosher.
According to the Jewish News, Jonathan and Shayna Evans and their two-year old daughter were dining at the Fourteas tearoom in Stratford-Upon-Avon on the weekend. They asked the restaurant if it could serve a high tea plate they were interested in without the chicken sandwiches it normally came with.
The tearoom refused their request when they suggested replacing the chicken with cucumber or offered to pay full price for the dish without the chicken.
When they said they would be mentioning the service issue in their TripAdvisor review, the owner of the restaurant made them leave.
“The owner came over quite aggressively, saying: ‘I’ve been told you’re using the review to get what you want,’” Jonathan Evans told the Jewish News. “He said, ‘You need to leave the restaurant’. I said, ‘I don’t understand, all we’re asking you to do is accommodate our religious belief.’”
He added: “As far as we’re concerned they might’ve as well had a sign up saying ‘No Jews allowed.’ That’s certainly how we were made to feel."
The couple later left a review on TripAdvisor about what had happened to them. Fourteans responded by accusing them of “seeking refuge behind imaginative cultural or religious reasons.”
In a statement responding to the couple’s review, the tearoom said: “The Fourteas TeaRoom will not tolerate the threat of posting a deliberately bad social media review as a means of imposing unacceptable and abusive behaviour towards its hard working personnel…. We also regret that we cannot accommodate mindsets seeking refuge behind imaginative cultural or religious reasons to justify selfish or arrogant attitudes. Respect and appreciation works both ways.”