Woman behind viral video where she complains about salmon Benedict, gets asked to leave restaurant reveals the whole thing was fake: 'I was not expecting all of this to happen'
An eyebrow-raising TikTok influencer named Winta (@winta_zesu) shared has gone super viral for showing a woman rejecting her breakfast at a restaurant — only to be asked to leave by the staff.
Most viewers were outraged by the clip, but the real kicker is this: The influencer has since admitted to staging the whole thing, and she can’t actually believe people thought it was real.
The uncomfortable exchange happens as Winta sits in an unnamed New York City restaurant for brunch with a friend. As the friend films, Winta can be heard asking the waitress to take back her food.
“The egg is like not on the salmon, so can I please get a new one? I don’t want to eat it,” she tells the waitress.
On the plate in front of her, two pieces of toast lay open-faced with salmon on top. But only one of the halves has a poached egg on top, while the other has it on the side.
To most people, this wouldn’t be a big deal, but for whatever reason, Winta wants a whole new plate. Or at least, she pretends to.
Instead of obliging or asking Winta why the presentation was a problem, a voice off-screen, presumably the waitress, is heard saying, “Can you leave already? Why are you even here?”
“You’re joking right?” Winta responds in mock astonishment. “I can’t make this up.”
The thing is, she definitely did make it up.
Winta then proceeds to show the camera how incorrect her order was, explaining that a true salmon Benedict would have both eggs on top of the salmon as well as the sauce, which was on the side.
But after confronting the waitress a second time, she is again asked to leave.
That’s when Winta asks to speak to the manager — to which the waitress responds, “I am the manager.”
From there, the cringe interaction just keeps going.
“I really don’t know who hired you to be a manager,” Winta tells her, “but I can clearly see that you are not, you know, the right person for the job.”
She then attempts to put one of the poached eggs back on top of the salmon but tells the waitress that if it breaks before she puts it on top, she’s not eating it.
Naturally, the egg starts to break open when she moves it with her fork, and Winta puts down her fork and knife to say, “Can I get a new one? Sorry.”
That’s when the influencer explains why she’s so hell-bent on getting a perfect-looking plate.
“It’s to be aesthetic for my story,” she says before doubling down. “Because I’m honestly not eating this until you bring me a new one.”
The unseen waitress doesn’t budge, and eventually, Winta says she’ll be leaving.
“You can just serve this to the next person because I didn’t eat it yet,” she tells the waitress.
Viewers were immediately annoyed by the video — and not because Winta got “kicked out,” but because she had the audacity to try and send her food back in the first place.
“Hot tip,” wrote one person. “Use the cutlery and place the egg on the salmon.”
“You have two options,” said someone else. “Put it on the salmon yourself or leave and never come back.”
“What’s this version of a Karen called?” another person wondered aloud.
“pick it up and put it on there then omfg pls I hope ur joking,” someone else wrote.
Apparently, Winta was joking — but not everyone got the memo right away.
In fact, if you scroll through her TikTok page, you’ll see several similar videos in which she complains about her food order.
In another video, posted shortly after the first, Winta makes an almost identical claim at another restaurant — and this time, it’s about the egg not being on top of her avocado.
“Why are the eggs on the side,” she captioned the post, with a disappointed emoji.
Once again, viewers were not having it.
“She wants to eat for free or something?” one person asked.
“i’d literally throw the whole meal at you,” another person told her.
“Treat those how you expect to be treated,” someone else commented.
In another video, Winta pretends she’s kicked out of an L.A. restaurant based on previous behavior.
And in another, she’s back at the same restaurant where the salmon Benedict incident happened — once again getting herself “kicked out.”
If you haven’t noticed, she has a bit of a shtick going here — one that she recently told Insider is all part of a satirical series.
“I was not expecting all of this to happen,” Winta told Insider. “I really didn’t think people were going to think it was real.”
In fact, the “waiter” she was pretending to speak to wasn’t even there, she told the outlet.
But the fact that it was all for “a joke” has also annoyed people. Especially now that TikTok set-ups are becoming an all-too-common thing, blurring the lines between fact and fiction.
“the biggest problem of today is that i have absolutely no idea of its a joke or serious wich bothers me,” someone vented in one of her TikToks.
“It was literally just me and my friend making a funny video about complaining, you know, like this stereotypical influencer thing, like a mean girl,” Winta told Insider. “I was looking up as if there was a waiter standing there, but there’s actually no one standing there.”
Despite all the hate she’s been getting, Winta is proud of the notoriety it’s earned her. Since she’s been interested in getting into acting, these skits have more or less served as “practice” for the real thing.
“People on the street, when I’m walking, are like, oh my God, I’ve seen your salmon video,” she told Insider proudly.
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