Ananya Birla a pop star and the daughter of Aditya Birla Group’s billionaire chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, has called out a US restaurant for being “racist”, alleging that 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 on October 24, 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.
In a tweet, educationist and mental health activist mother Neerja Birla.Neerja 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 said.
“I have never experienced anything of this sort. Racism exists and is real. Unbelievable. @ScopaRestaurant,” their son Aryaman Birla also tweeted.
However according to a report in Mid-day, Pablo Moix, a partner in the restaurant, denied that they were thrown out of the restaurant and said that they had stayed on to finish their meal. He told news agency IANS that the situation arose when Birlas 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, complimented both the waiter they had and the quality of the food", 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.
After the singer-song writer received a lot of support from netizens on social media, she tweeted a message to her fans: "I love you all so much (heart) you'll are the best. Thank you for always protecting me! Today is a new day to create some magic! New song dropping soon."
With inputs from PTI
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