Angry Yelp Review Inspires Epic Reply From Restaurant Owner [Updated]

Photo courtesy of Voltaire restaurant

UPDATE: Yahoo Food received an email from Voltaire owner Wes Gartner, who wished to clarify that, while he does not allow take-out orders for reasons he explained on Eater, he will package leftovers for restaurant diners. Many readers, he wrote, “thought we were refusing to pack up their food after they had dined with us—which couldn’t be anything farther from the truth.”

For today’s dose of schadenfreude, we turn to Kansas City, Missouri, where an irate Yelper (self-identifying only as “Sonal B”) is downright steamed that local eatery Voltaire refused to break its no-takeout rule for her.

The nerve! But, because the Internet is a beautiful place, our friends at Eater have the restaurant’s epic response.

Here’s a snippet of the very public tête-à-tête:

Sonal B: "The manager, Jamie, said, ‘our food is plated beautifully, and we can’t put it in a ‘to go’ container.’ So thanks, Jamie, we’ll just starve. … When my husband said that he was going to post a Yelp review about the way the restaurant was treating us, the manager questioned, ‘Are you a grown man and an adult?’"

Voltaire: "If you were actually starving, as in a life threatening condition requiring nutritional sustenance, we would be happy to assist you..we do make exceptions for emergency situations. … I can assure you that we don’t offer "take-out" food because we feel we are "too good" for our customers; we just prefer to have our guests dine with us, allowing for the proper presentation (and temperature) of their fare that has been skillfully prepared by our kitchen."

So far, reader comments on Eater have been all over the map, with about 75 percent taking the eatery’s side. Some think the restaurant’s smackdown was justified, such as UmamiJedi, who writes: “If you don’t like what the restaurant offers, DON’T GO THERE. Your fellow diners seriously hate you as much as the restaurant staff.”

Others, including tualbertnyc, aren’t as tickled by Voltaire’s comic stylings: “The restaurant manager probably feels really good about himself but as a business operator in the hospitality industry, he made the wrong decision. Restaurants, after all, are in the business of feeding people; successful restaurants maintain and grow the number of people the feed. Besides pride, what would it have cost to find a solution?”

But perhaps burgerdogboy sums it up best: “Apparently all sorts of immature people (on both sides of the street) in KC.”

So what do you think? Let us know below. (All things considered, Sonal B’s venting isn’t the nastiest Yelp review we’ve ever read. And at least it doesn’t involve a lawsuit… yet!)

[via Eater]