Complaint Review: Cup & Saucer - Lake worth Florida

Let me start off by saying, I took my family into "Cup & Saucer" a couple weeks back and had a perfectly good experience. The staff was friendly and courteous to me, my wife and three kids. Our meals were acceptable and the atmosphere was fine. The only thing that stood out on this first visit was that as we were leaving I saw a slight commotion at the entrance. A nice African-American family was coming in and I noticed the manager rush to the front door, put his arm around the father and guide him back outside pointing at another restaurant down the street. But I didn't think much of it at the time.

This brings me to today. I got in touch with my good friend of twenty-two years, Tyrone Jackson, over the past week and he decided to come visit me from Virginia for a few days. I decided to treat him

and his family out to lunch at this "Cup & Saucer" today, in which he gladly accepted.

We walked into the restaurant and immediately I knew something wasn't exactly right. Every eye in the entire restaurant was on us. I saw one of the waitresses look up at us, glare, turn toward the manager and say "what's this about?!", while clearly pointing out the six of us.

The manager quickly walked up to us and said "Um, can I help you?" I responded with "Yes, we'd love to get some lunch." After about a 10-second look of confusion on the manager's face, he said "Are ALL of you together?" I then confirmed that we were all together, and that there's six of us total.

The manager then pulled me aside and leaned in my ear and whispered "Sir, is everything ok here? Are you in some kind of trouble?" Confused, I simply stated "No! Why would you think that?" He then looked back at his wait staff, who were all now clearly looking directly at us. "What's the problem?!" Without saying anything, he grabbed six menus and started briskly walking us back to our seats, in which I might add was in the far back of the restaurant where we couldn't even be seen! It was directly next to the bathrooms! In fact as we were being seated I saw a 6 foot 8 inch, 300 pound man wearing a shirt with a rebel flag on it, hustle into the bathroom. From our booth we could hear him struggling and spraying diarrhea! As he left the bathroom and opened the door, we were so close we could smell it waft across our table almost ruining our appetites. On top of this the booth he sat us in couldn't even fit four people in it, let alone six! And when I asked if we could sit at one of the bigger booths at the front of the restaurant and the manager responded,"Sir that's highly unorthodox given your current...situation". I had no clue what he meant by that but soon enough I would figure out what was going on here.

We were going to leave at this point but the kids were starving and I have to admit I was pretty hungry myself. Just to get things rolling we all ordered 6 orange juices and 6 short stacks of pancakes. After a 30 minute wait our drinks came out. My drink was correct. A large orange juice. Unfortunately the restaurant was only batting 1 for 6, because they incorrectly brought us 5 grape Kool-Aids for the rest of my party. We told the waitress these were wrong, but it didn't matter because we didn't see her again until the food came out. Once again my food order was correct. A delicious stack of pancakes oozing with melted butter and all natural maple syrup. But, again my parties order was mixed up. Instead of 5 other short stacks, we received 5 plates of fried chicken with sides of watermelon. The waitress tried to drop them off and run away from the table but my friend Tyrone spoke up, "HEY! What's the meaning of this?! Is this some sort of message? You guys got a problem with me and my family eating here?!

Just then I could hear rumblings all around us. I could hear people shouting from the other side of the restaurant, "This is bull-s**t man!" "This is our place!" "Get them outta here!" I could tell my friend was getting nervous so we just all quickly ate our food. Tyrone always had kind of a nervous stomach, so I could tell he was probably gonna have some issues here. A few more minutes into the meal he started to get up to go to the bathroom. Tyrone pushed his chair back and stood halfway up when the sheriff came out of nowhere and grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him back down into his seat. "You tryin' to leave here without payin' boy?!" "What? No, I'm just going to the restroom", Tyrone said. "Restroom? That's funny. We don't even have a restroom for your kind here. So how you gonna go to the restroom if there ain't no restroom?", the sheriff said. Tyrone quickly responded, "OK, OK sir, I don't want any trouble, we're just gonna finish our meal and get out of here." "Well don't forget to pay when you do boy", the sheriff said.

So, we finally finished our meals and were ready to go. We thought the waitress was going to bring our bill but she came out of the kitchen with a dessert we didn't even order. It was a plate of berries arranged on the plate in a lower case "t" shape. She brought it to our table and I said to her, "we didn't order this." She said, "I know, compliments of the house. Our special berries flambet." She pulled out a lighter and lit the berries on fire in front on all of us. She turned around as if she was going to walk away, but just bent over and proceeded to pass gas for a full 10 count over our table igniting the small flame into a giant mushroom cloud, burning the hair on my arms and the eyebrows of Tyrone's wife.

Well, this was finally enough. We put $100 dollars down on the table to cover the bill and stood up to leave. We almost got to the door when 3 giant men all wearing dirty overalls, flannel shirts with the sleeves cut off and rebel flag hats stood up in our way. "Where you goin?" the biggest one said. I said back to him, "We don't want any trouble, we are just trying to leave here." "Oh your free to go sir. It's your 5 friends I'm worried about. They ain't goin' nowhere. You see we don't take kindly to those kinds around here."

Well this was enough for me. It was time to stand up to this horrible diner and the bigoted staff and customers in here. I got right in the guys face and said, "LISTEN! I don't know what year you're living in, but you can't treat people like this just because of the color of their skin! I'm not gonna stand for it anymore!" At this point the whole restaurant was looking on and looking very confused. The 3 guys in my way were looking equally confused. The manager then came out of the kitchen and approached us. "No, No, No. You got us all wrong mister. This has nothin' to do with their skin color boy. Look at what they're wearing." Just then it finally dawned on me. My eyes darted around to Tyrone and his family and I couldn't believe I had missed it. You see they were all down here visiting me on the way to the Dolphins/Jets game, and they were all wearing matching Jets jerseys. I was the only one wearing a Dolphins jersey. "We love Blacks round here. But this is Dolphins country and we don't tolerate Jets fans none!", the manager said. I felt so stupid. I totally misjudged these people. But the service was still terrible.