Restaurant Co-Owner Resigns After Claiming To Have ‘Spiked A Vegan’
2018 isn’t even a week old yet, and we’ve already got a candidate for one of the most bizarre stories of the year.
Probe After Carlini Shifnal Restaurant Chef Laura Goodman ‘Boasts Of Spiking A Vegan’ https://t.co/jsoBwjF1Nr pic.twitter.com/GNGZ3DVTRR
— Vegan Newz (@Vegan_Newz) January 2, 2018
UK restaurant Carlini and its co-owner, Laura Goodman, are under fire after she posted in a Facebook group that she “spiked a vegan” at her restaurant.
“Spiked a vegan a few hours ago,” one of her posts read. Another one according to HuffPost UK, said “Pious, judgemental vegan (who I spent all day cooking for) has gone to bed, still believing she’s a vegan.”
Without any other context, many took it to mean that Goodman had deceptively fed some vegans meat and dairy at her establishment.
@foodgov Happy New Year to you all. Plse can you investigate this. Vegans get mocked everyday, we can handle that but when this happens it is not acceptable. This could be dangerous for a customer’s health. Laura Goodman at Carlini has admitted this. Thk you pic.twitter.com/UuUDisKHSE
— Lois Wren (@Eco_Before_Ego) January 1, 2018
This is absolutely bloody disgraceful. A chef claiming she’s spiked vegans food. Hope the @foodgov does something. It’s #Carlini Shifnal. pic.twitter.com/xdvZATNCAE
— VeganWelshGirl 🐇 (@veganwelshgirl) January 1, 2018
LAURA GOODMAN of CARLINI restaurant Shifnal, Shropshire – YOU ARE A LEGEND
Forget the useless idiots who get on New Years Honours list, this lady should be crowned Queen.
— Farmers Minds® (@FarmersMinds) January 2, 2018
This led to a flurry of angry tweets and posts on social media, with many protesting by giving the restaurant 1-star reviews on TripAdvisor and Google Reviews. Carlini has since deleted its Facebook page and removed itself from Google Reviews, while TripAdvisor has put a hold on reviews as a result. The restaurant is also now under investigation by a local regulatory services department because of all of the complaints received.
Ironically, Goodman wasn’t even really telling the truth when she said she “spiked a vegan.” She never knowingly served meat to anyone abstaining from it. Her comment was inspired after she had spent a good chunk of her day preparing a special vegan menu for a group coming to eat at Carlini. The party decided to choose entrees off of the existing menu instead, including one person that selected a cheese-based, non-vegan pizza.
According to the Shropshire Star, the restaurant has since released a statement that Goodman’s comments were “ill-judged,” but that no vegans were unknowingly fed meat at their restaurant.
Goodman’s partner, Michael Gale, was very apologetic in remarks he made to HuffPost UK:
“We don’t even know if the person that ordered the pizza was vegan, she could have just been vegetarian, in which case there would have been no problem with her ordering that.
The only complaint we had from that table was from someone who said that the salad wasn’t very interesting.
We’ve completely shot ourselves in the foot. We now understand that in the vegetarian and vegan world, saying that you’ve ‘spiked’ someone’s food means that you put meat in it, which isn’t the case here.”
UPDATE: The Shropshire Star reports that following all of the wacky events above, Laura Goodman has tendered her resignation as co-owner of Carlini.
