Table for Jew
25 August 2005 by SeanI think I need to call this restaurant and make a reservation. When they ask me my name, I’m gonna say “Jew Couple.”
Outrageous. From the New York Post… A rag I never read, but it was one of the few places I could find that had the whole story:
By LEELA de KRETSER
New York Post
August 17, 2005 — Two diners on a date at a fancy Jersey Shore restaurant were furious when they saw the check — which listed their table as that of the “Jew Couple.”
Brooklynite Elliot Stein says he was shocked that a waitress at the Parkhill’s Waterfront Grill in Allenhurst printed the slur instead of a table number on his $36.75 bill.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the 23-year-old shoe buyer told The Post, the offensive phrase then turned up on his credit-card statement two weeks later.
“My grandfather went through all that in old-school Europe,” an angry Stein said yesterday. “But that happened more than 50 years ago. You don’t expect it to happen in 2005, especially when a lot of their money comes from our community.”
Stein, who has a vacation house in nearby Deal, N.J., said he was a regular at the waterfront establishment.
Relaxing at happy hour on a Friday night, July 8, he and his girlfriend of two years, Jennifer Cassin, had just finished their sushi and drinks.
When the check arrived, a startled Cassin picked it up and handed it to her boyfriend, saying, “What the hell is this?”
Along with the list of their orders was the printed phrase: “Jew Couple.”
Stein said he took the offensive bill and showed it to Jewish friends seated nearby who said they could not believe it.
When the group started questioning the manager, Stein said she simply told them there was nothing derogatory about the statement.
Stein said he was then asked to leave for making a fuss.
The restaurant’s general manager, Malia Wells, yesterday told The Post that the offending phrase was a matter of “poor judgment on the part of a bartender.”
The server, shown as Karina on Stein’s bill, has since “moved on,” Wells said. She would not say whether Karina was fired.
“We are a family restaurant, and we welcome everybody,” she said, adding that the words “Jew Couple” were never intended to be derogatory.
“We use it as a form of identity,” she said. She would not elaborate on what the restaurant does when there is more than one couple assumed to be Jewish at the restaurant.
Etzion Neuer, director of the New Jersey Anti-Defamation League, said the case was outrageous.
“The idea that a restaurant or any establishment is labeling customers by race and then printing it on their bill is unbelievable,” Neuer said.
“It doesn’t even say Jew-ish,” he pointed out. “It’s indefensible.”
25 August 2005, on 2:19 pm
Unbelievable. And I think the manager should have just kept her mouth shut rather than opening it and saying stupid things like, “We use it as a form of identity.” Good grief.
Good for the Post. This line cracked me up: “She would not elaborate on what the restaurant does when there is more than one couple assumed to be Jewish at the restaurant.”
25 August 2005, on 3:01 pm
Yeah… The manager is none too bright. Talk about admitting responsibility. I wonder if the couple can take civil rights action against these bozos. I would be so pissed if I were them.
25 August 2005, on 5:07 pm
We TOTALLY need to call this place and make reservations as “Jew Couple”…
25 August 2005, on 5:25 pm
I think am gonna do it this Saturday fer sher. Others are encouraged to make their own calls. Hehe.
26 August 2005, on 8:33 am
Wow! The other thing you locals might consider is e-mailing the author of the story and the editor and thanking them for their coverage of this important issue, willingness to print it, etc.
26 August 2005, on 1:04 pm
No, say “Jew Single.” Restaurants hate single reservations, because one person takes up a two-person table. So they’ll have two reasons to disparage you. Or you could say “Jew Group.” Or, or, you could say “Mossad Group.” That’ll get their intestines going. Oh, probably not, they probably don’t know what the Mossad is. God, what pathetic putzes.
26 August 2005, on 7:17 pm
Well, you can’t make a reservation for just one, or two or even four. But you can for five. Check it out. I called them and recorded it!
26 August 2005, on 11:27 pm
Oh my gawdness, Jimmy B. That’s fuckin’ hilarious. Good on ya.
26 August 2005, on 11:33 pm
Holy shit… Jimmy Braggart beat me to it. Awesome and funny as hell. Was brainstorming with some friends on more pranks we can make. Like calling the restaurant and just casually asking: “Jew require a dinner jacket?” Or “How late are Jew open?”
Totally gotta do this!
This has the potential of being way more fun than tiddlywinks.
27 August 2005, on 12:44 am
Yeah, I read this article originally on Waiter Rant’s site. I actually thought it was comical. Part of me understood why the couple got pissed, but then I thought: Maybe they got upset because the title the bartender placed on the tab wasn’t ‘kosher’.
What you need to do is call up the restaurant and find out if they have French Dip sandwiches, served with A Jew dipping sauce.
27 August 2005, on 1:03 am
[...] I just had to bubble this up. Someone actually called the restaurant in Jersey that had the Jew comment. [...]
4 September 2005, on 3:58 pm
I don’t understand. What is the problem? They were a jew couple. How can it be racist to call them what they are?
6 September 2005, on 2:00 pm
Why would a restaurant not use a table number like restaurants have for many years? What was the motivation for labelling them the “Jew couple”? And, as the piece rightly asks, what do you do when there is more than one “Jew couple” in the restaurant?
The term “Jew”, when used in this manner, is generally considered offensive. “Jewish” is the preferred term, but even then, labelling people by outward appearance is a dangerous road to take in any society. Firstly, how did the waiter know they were even Jewish? What was the basis of this, because they had big noses or something?
Again, “Jew couple” itself is a poor choice of words, since a Gentile calling someone “Jew”, rather than “Jewish” has a whole set of connotations attached to it. There is a need for cultural memory and sensitivity in these circumstances. “Jew couple” sounds like the kind of thing that would be scrawled on someone’s front door in the KKK South. It’s not much different from calling them the “Polack couple.” The word “Polack” was once an accepted way to describe someone of Polish descent… That use is now considered obsolete, because the term was used with such derision for so long. Now you say “Polish.”
We only need to look at Nazi Germany to learn that labelling people based on ethnicity — or even your perception of their ethnicity — begins a process in society that can only lead to bad, bad things. Today they are the “Jew couple”, tomorrow they are “Those liberal Jews”, the day after that they are — what? “The vermin Jew couple”?
They should have been simply “Table 12″. Anything else is just unacceptable.
24 September 2005, on 10:28 am
It makes me want to sneak over there in the middle of the night and repaint their sign to say “Racist Grill”