THE VIRGINIA RED HEN RESTAURANT IS PAYING FOR ITS HIGH MORALS

…The Red Hen Restaurant in Lexington, Virginia.

A Lexington resident delivered a bouquet of flowers and a sign that read: “Democracy requires principled gov’t. Thank you Red Hen!!”

Well, once again the president has stepped into it with one of his tweets.  Here is the exact tweet: “The Ren Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job), rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders.”

Okay, so here is the background on what brought the president to send out such a tweet.

Oh, and just to make this very clear.  This Red Hen Restaurant is not the posh Red Hen Restaurant located in D.C..  This is a small, 26 seat restaurant located on the rural, but historic town of Lexington, Virginia.

What actually happened was that a reservation for 8 had been made by the husband of the president’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, at the small Virginia restaurant.

Now it must be understood that in this community, the voters had voted overwhelmingly against Donald Trump for president. 

But the owner of the restaurant, Stephanie Wilkinson, has managed for the Red Hen to stay in business for 10 years by keeping politics off the menu.  She also has at her restaurant a  half-dozen servers and cooks, and some of which are gay.  These employees knew, and they had discussed that Sanders always defended Trump’s attempt to bar transgender people from the military.  Specifically, last month, the restaurant workers had all watched Sanders evade questions and defend a Trump policy that caused migrant children to be separated from their parents.

Both the owner and her employees all agreed that Ms. Sanders’s currently worked in the service of an “inhumane and unethical” administration. That Ms. Sanders continually and publicly defended the president’s cruelest policies, and that just isn't being a true American.

What then occurred was at that Saturday evening at 8:00, while the owner was at home, she received a call from the restaurant.  The caller was her chef at the Red Hen and he was calling to tell her that Sarah Huckabee Sanders had just walked in with 7 others and they had sat down at their one group table.  Knowing the way all the employees felt, the Chef then asked, “So what should we do?”

To make sure that the chef hadn’t miss-identified Ms. Sanders, the owner jumped into her car and drove the short distance to the restaurant.

Sure enough, Ms. Sanders was sitting there wearing in black dress, with her husband, and six other adults.

Later Ms. Wilkinson admitted that she was “Not a huge fan of confrontation, but I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This felt like the moment in our democracy when we as people have to make uncomfortable decisions to uphold our true morals.”

She then noted, “They had cheese boards in front of them, and like any other customers, the kitchen was already preparing the party’s main course.” 

Wilkinson then interrupted the kitchen to huddle with her workers.

She asked her crew, “Tell me what you want me to do. I can ask her to leave.”  After some short discussion, the crew unanimously agreed that Ms. Sanders should be asked to leave.

It was important to the owner that Sanders was a public official, not just a regular customer, and someone with whom she and her crew totally disagreed.  She also knew that many of her regular clientele, that she had talked with, also believed as she and the workers did.

All the same, she was obviously very tense as she walked up to the press secretary’s chair.

She said, “I’m the owner, and I’d like you to come out to the patio with me for a word.’ ”

They stepped outside, out of the crowded restaurant.

“I was babbling a little, but I got my point across in a polite and direct fashion,” Wilkinson said. “I explained that the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, compassion, and cooperation.  And I said, “I’d like to ask you to leave. ”

Wilkinson didn’t know how Sanders would react, or whether Trump’s chief spokeswoman had ever been called out in a restaurant before, as had the president’s Homeland Security Secretary (HSS) in a Mexican restaurant just days earlier.

Sanders’s response was immediate, Wilkinson said: “ ‘That’s fine. I’ll go.’ ”

Sanders went back to the table, picked up her things and walked out. The others at her table had been welcome to stay, Wilkinson said. But they didn’t, so the servers cleared away the cheese plates and glasses.

“They offered to pay,” Wilkinson said.  I said, “No. It’s on the house.’”

The next day at the White House Press Meeting, the press secretary stated the following:  “Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.”

Unfortunately, because of this situation, the Red Hen in Virginia has received some bad reactions.

Reporters and photographers started to loiter outside the restaurant, as did people who had wandered over just to gawk.

“Boo, Red Hen!” and “Yay, Trump!” were shouted from the windows of passing cars.  However, a Lexington resident brought by a bouquet of flowers and a hand-lettered sign that read, “Democracy requires principled gov’t. Thank you Red Hen!!”

Chris Roessler, a would-be customer, stood outside in confusion. He and his wife had booked an evening reservation, and he just received an email canceling the reservation.

“We would like to avoid exposing our patrons to any potential unpleasantness from outside entities,” Red Hen management had written.  But at the same time, fans of President Trump were doing their best to call and make fake reservations.

Over the next two days, a backlash against the Red Hen grew in intensity, but it didn’t stop there.

Far-right individuals have been passing around Wilkinson’s home address and phone number on social media.

“Go after her children and her husband just like the leftist do to Trump employees,” a commenter wrote criticizing the restaurateur.

Sanders’s father, former Arkansas governor, Mike Huckabee, described the episode as “bigotry,” while Ben Cline, a Republican Virginia lawmaker, called Wilkinson a “liberal New York transplant.”  Yes, Ms. Wilkinson was originally from New York, but she has owned a house in Lexington since at least 1996.

An unaffiliated Red Hen restaurant, hundreds of miles away was egged overnight.  Sanders’s supporters have reportedly even spoken out against the Olde Red Hen in Ontario, Canada.

The Lexington Va. Red Hen Restaurant’s phone lines have been down since that weekend.

As a final comment, I would like to respond to something in the president’s tweet:

As to the president’s comment that the Red Hen restaurant was “dirty”, the health department has inspected the Red Hen annually since 2014.  On those inspections, including the most recent one in February, inspectors found no issues. The February inspector had only positive remarks for Wilkinson’s restaurant, saying, among other things, that the “staff had clean uniforms/aprons and the line-cook had their hair restrained.”

On the other hand, the most recent report at the D.C. Trump International Hotel, inspectors found the hotel out of compliance in nine categories, including for unsanitary food contact surfaces, improper food holding temperatures and improper storage to prevent cross contamination. The inspector also noted that Trump’s hotel license does not make any mention of the hotel having a kitchen, but the property has four separate food preparation areas. “Please contact DCRA to remedy this issue,” the inspector wrote, referring to the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, which issues the business licenses.  A follow-up inspection in May found the Trump hotel still out of compliance in four more areas.

In addition, last year, the president’s resort retreat in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, was dinged for 13 restaurant code infractions.

A Washington Post staffer recently conducted an informal inspection at Trump’s International D.C. hotel.  Inside, in the lobby bar, the breakfast diner found himself sitting on a velvety blue couch strewn not just with crumbs, but also with several hairs that weren’t his and multiple spots of indeterminate vintage.  Also, the side of his white marble table had a reddish stain on it and it was sticky.  Similar inattention to basic housekeeping extended to the ground-floor men’s room, where two toilets were un-flushed.

Perhaps, the president should clean up his own hotel operations before criticizing other businesses.

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