Update: You can read a story in Washingtonian with the restaurant’s side of the story including:
Armstrong says the manager handled the situation with professionalism as she was trained. He says when she asked the friends to leave, they said, ‘We’re not leaving, you’ll have to drag us out of here.'”
“We had no choice but to call the police,” says Armstrong. Since opening Restaurant Eve in Alexandria 15 years ago, he says it’s the first time the authorities have gotten involved with a customer.
“Dear PoPville,
It was 80 degrees in DC so it was only right to grab dinner and drinks with a friends. My girlfriend just moved to Southwest so it was a great chance to check out her new digs and then head out for bites and libations. As we were cruising the new Wharf boardwalk, she mentioned that there’s a new Thai restaurant. Since I just returned from Thailand, I said yes let’s continue the celebration.
We walked through the busy doors of Kaliwa, a Filipino, Korean and Thai fusion restaurant and found a seat at the bar. We sat down to one drink menu and one food menu slapped on the counter. After sitting there for 15 minutes, I asked the bartender if we could order food. He took our order that included a noodle dish and their signature whole fried fish. Once our food arrived, we noticed that the noodle dish was more of a soup and we were expecting a food item similar to pad thai or lo mein.
My friend asked one of the employees, who turned out to be the manager if we were able to get additional noodles but she stated that we would be charged the same price as the meal since the noodles are handmade. I told her nevermind and we continued to chow down while catching up on our recent trips aboard. As we continued our conversation, this woman “manager” offered an additional pour of wine for the lack of noodles in the dish. Such a nice gesture so we thought.
As we continued to indulge, I noticed that my friend staring at our shared meal while pulling out a long strand of black hair from the fish entree that we were eating. In our disgusts, We called over one of the servers to show him. He took the plate to show the woman manager. After a few minutes of reviewing the hair, she came over to address our issue. We were not trying to make a big deal of the situation and was just expecting a simple apology but before the expected “I am sorry but…,” she looked at my friend and say “this looks like your hair.” (more…)
