NY- Two diners on a date at a fancy Jersey Shore restaurant were furious when they saw the check – which listed their table as that of the “Jew Couple.”
Brooklynite Elliot Stein says he was shocked that a waitress at the Parkhill’s Waterfront Grill in Allenhurst printed the slur instead of a table number on his $36.75 bill.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the 23-year-old shoe buyer told The Post, the offensive phrase then turned up on his credit-card statement two weeks later.
“My grandfather went through all that in old-school Europe,” an angry Stein said yesterday. “But that happened more than 50 years ago. You don’t expect it to happen in 2005, especially when a lot of their money comes from our community.”
Stein, who has a vacation house in nearby Deal, N.J., said he was a regular at the waterfront establishment.
Relaxing at happy hour on a Friday night, July 8, he and his girlfriend of two years, Jennifer Cassin, had just finished their sushi and drinks.
When the check arrived, a startled Cassin picked it up and handed it to her boyfriend, saying, “What the hell is this?”
Along with the list of their orders was the printed phrase: “Jew Couple.”
Stein said he took the offensive bill and showed it to Jewish friends seated nearby who said they could not believe it.
When the group started questioning the manager, Stein said she simply told them there was nothing derogatory about the statement.
Stein said he was then asked to leave for making a fuss.
The restaurant’s general manager, Malia Wells, yesterday told The Post that the offending phrase was a matter of “poor judgment on the part of a bartender.”
The server, shown as Karina on Stein’s bill, has since “moved on,” Wells said. She would not say whether Karina was fired.
“We are a family restaurant, and we welcome everybody,” she said, adding that the words “Jew Couple” were never intended to be derogatory.
“We use it as a form of identity,” she said. She would not elaborate on what the restaurant does when there is more than one couple assumed to be Jewish at the restaurant.
Etzion Neuer, director of the New Jersey Anti-Defamation League, said the case was outrageous.
“The idea that a restaurant or any establishment is labeling customers by race and then printing it on their bill is unbelievable,” Neuer said.
“It doesn’t even say Jew-ish,” he pointed out. “It’s indefensible.”