New York restaurant bans lone female diners from sitting at the bar

A New York restaurant has come under fire for banning female diners from eating alone at the bar in case they are mistaken for prostitutes.

The unusual rule was discovered after a female executive went to Nello restaurant to dine solo, only to be told she was banned from the bar.

Clementine Crawford, of branding firm Finch & Partners, said she’s been a regular at the upmarket Madison Avenue restaurant for the past few years.

But on a recent visit was told by a waiter that she was no longer allowed to eat “perched at my favourite seat at the bar” and must now sit down at a table.

However, she later noticed a male patron at the bar being served a full pasta dinner.

She asked to speak with the owner, who simply told her that he could run his business as he pleased and that she could only eat at a table.

“Things escalated quickly into an explosive argument,” she later wrote. “I told him what I thought of him in no uncertain terms and departed into the night with a heavy heart.”

Sheridan Randall, 22^nd January 2019