New York: Ananya Birla, the daughter of Aditya Birla Group’s chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, has slammed a US restaurant for being “racist”, saying the Italian-American dining place in California “literally threw” her and her family out of their premises.
The singer and artist took to Twitter to share her ordeal, saying “this is not okay”. “This restaurant @ScopaRestaurant literally threw my family and I, out of their premises. So racist. So sad. You really need to treat your customers right. Very racist. This is not okay,” she said in a tweet. The Scopa Italian Roots restaurant is an Italian-American dining place by chef Antonia Lofaso in California.
“We waited for 3 hours to eat at your restaurant. @chefantonia Your waiter Joshua Silverman was extremely rude to my mother, bordering racist. This isn’t okay,” Ananya said in another tweet, in which she tagged Lofaso. Her mother, educationist and mental health activist Neerja Birla, also lashed out at the restaurant for ill-treating them. “Very shocking… absolutely ridiculous behaviour by @ScopaRestaurant. You have no right to treat any of your customers like this,” she wrote on Twitter. “I have never experienced anything of this sort. Racism exists and is real. Unbelievable. @ScopaRestaurant,” their son Aryaman Birla also tweeted.
However, Pablo Moix, a partner in the restaurant, denied that they were thrown out of the restaurant. He said that the situation arose when they were asked for their original IDs as required under state law to serve alcohol, which two people in the party had and the others only had copies of them. The situation escalated and then “deescalated” and “they stayed and finished their meal”, Moix said. “I understand that everyone is on edge these days,” he said, adding: “It was an unfortunate situation.” Moix said that he wants them to visit the restaurant again.
