Restaurant Apologises For Foul-Mouthed Twitter Rant At Customer

A Dublin restaurant is the latest eatery to find itself at the centre of a social media row after calling a disgruntled customer an “arsehole” on Twitter.

Cinnamon, an upmarket cafe and wine bar in Ranelagh, issued a grovelling apology and said it had disciplined the staff member who sent out the insulting tweets.

The unnamed worker saw red during a particularly busy Sunday service when blogger Sean Mongey sent out a message on Twitter, saying he had been waiting in the “pretentious crèche” for 40 minutes and his food still hadn’t arrived.

Cinnamon replied with a snooty: “We don’t have a problem that needs to be solved we are Dublin’s busiest restaurant on Sunday...Expect delays.”

When the customer threatened to take his business elsewhere, the family-friendly restaurant replied: “Please do. You’ll be one less person in the Q.”

The staff member then added for good measure: "Here's something else for you to re tweet. You're an arsehole. Why don't you come in and introduce yourself to us."

Six hours later, the restaurant deleted the offending tweets and issued an apology on its Facebook page, offering in a self-effacing style while also appearing to enjoy the attention, that it would be serving coffees for one euro for the next week to diners who mentioned “Twittergate” while ordering.

“We wish to formally apologise to the customer, who we accept had a legitimate complaint,” the statement said. "We are a very busy restaurant and this past weekend had 50% more customers than a normal weekend and were overwhelmed by this.

“Staff morale is very important to us and has been severely affected by this incident. We employ over 50 staff and would not wish to jeopardise their livelihood."

Seems a bit of a storm in a coffee cup, compared with the foul-mouthed Twitter rants an unknown blogger was subjected to last week by Claude Bosi and his celebrity chef chums after complaining about his crab starter at the French cook’s London restaurant Hibiscus.

Bosi, Tom Kerridge, and Sat Baines dubbed James Isherwood a “cunt”, with Kerridge adding: “Smash him in, chef Bosi.”

None of them have apologised, as far as I know, so you have to applaud Cinnamon restaurant for doing so over a much milder mauling. But the way the blogger has relentlessly milked the story over the past few days it makes you wonder whether they might have had a point.