Restaurant Boss Sacked For 'Ghetto' Email

Restaurant Rule Number 358: Don't leave insulting messages about customers on the bottom of emails.

Anyone who saw Michel Roux’s Service may have despaired at the idea of taking a bunch of carefully chosen fuckwits and turning them into top waiters and restaurant managers (where will the reality TV food programme trend end – Ainsley Harriott’s quest to find Britain’s best potwash?)

Yet despite their stroppiness and inexperience none of them could possibly be as bad as Andy Nesenson, the general manager of a Mississippi restaurant who got fired for writing a racially offensive email that was mistakenly sent to a black customer.

LaTrenda Watson said she was shocked and appalled when she received the insulting message after booking a table for 15 at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Ridgeland to celebrate her mother’s 60th birthday.

Nesenson wrote in an internal email to marketing manager Wendy Stringer Partain: “Another ghetto Sat. Party. They really love us don't they. Especially on Sat. Call her and get her on the books if we have room, and I will take care of the rest."

For some reason, Partain sent a confirmation email to Watson, with the offensive email attached at the end. Watson complained to the company and Nesenson was immediately fired.

"The whole plan was to throw my mother a birthday party, and we wanted to have it at a nice restaurant in a nice setting. So we chose Ruth's Chris," said Watson.

"My heart just really dropped, and I was in total shock. And from that total shock, I began to get really angry and upset. I took it as them looking at my name and saying okay this is a black person - they must be ghetto.”

Watson cancelled the reservation and moved the party to another restaurant. She was later contacted by Ruth’s Chris to tell her Nesenson had been sacked.

Michael O’Donnel, group president of the 120-strong franchise chain, said in a statement: “We are saddened to hear and so very sorry that anyone associated with Ruth's Chris Steak House would think or make a statement so misaligned with our culture.

“On behalf of all our employees and franchises I am sorry that this ugly, inappropriate incident happened."

Fugitive Foodie Undone By Pork Stew

If you ever wanted to illustrate the benefits of learning how to knock out the odd easy dish, then look no further than the unlikely tale of Chang Wen-tzung.

The food-loving fugitive managed to evade cops for 15 years until his craving for stewed pork rice got the better of him, says the Central News Agency.

The 56-year-old fled a drugs conviction in Taiwan for illegally consuming codeine (claiming it had come from, you know, when he’d accidentally downed some cough medicine), but the years he spent on the run in China, apparently made his hankering for lu rou fan all the more severe.

Rather than learn how to boil down some pork belly chunks, soy sauce, garlic, shitake mushrooms and a handful of hard-boiled eggs - a dish that even Ainsley Harriott could probably have a stab at - he eventually decided he could take no more, and flew back to the island for a slap-up feast, but was arrested at Taichung airport.

When Chang told police that his craving had brought him back to the island, an officer went to a night market to buy him a bowl of stewed pork rice. The price? Three years and 50 days in prison. But then I suppose other people's cooking always tastes better...or is that just me?

This stewed pork recipe’s for all the gastronomes still on the run...and comes courtesy of the excellent blog Gaga In The Kitchen.