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OPINION: TikTok food reviewer Keith Lee ran into a range of issues when he came to Atlanta that residents have been dealing with for years. It’s time to stop the madness.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
I must admit, I wasn’t familiar with Keith Lee until a few days ago when I came across his now viral Milk and Honey post on TikTok. I immediately thought, “This brotha is spot on.” I’m an Atlanta native. Born right downtown at then-Georgia Baptist Hospital. Both sides of my family are still here, and I wouldn’t want to claim any other city as my permanent home. I will usually defend Atlanta to the nine when it comes to the criticism we often get.
However, I have to agree with Keith and Cardi B: Many of the Black-owned restaurants here will test your patience and oftentimes the celebrity-owned restaurants are the biggest offenders. I, for one, was excited to visit Kandi Burruss’ Old Lady Gang Restaurant despite many of the mishaps I heard about in the media over the last few years. And I hear you, Kandi, about not having the bandwidth for to-go orders on weekends at your current locations. What your post didn’t address is your staff prioritizing certain patrons over others. Not cool. We’re paying AND posting so don’t forget about the little people. Much like OLG, there are great restaurants in Atlanta with good concepts, but there are some recurring themes that should be addressed. Here are a few that made my list.
Most of these establishments follow rules when it comes to posting their business hours online and on the front doors. But when it’s time to open, you are usually left waiting until someone decides to show up to work, clock in and unlock the door. I’ve sat in parking lots waiting for upwards of 30 minutes until businesses decided they were open. And forget about getting anyone on the phone. If you call, most times you’re met with an answering service that’s full or placed on hold by someone who sounds way too busy to talk to you, the potential customer.
This is the newest thing that irks my nerves to no end. You are automatically paying a gratuity on parties of one or more. Yes, I said it. Everybody pays gratuity. While I’m typically a great tipper, I don’t want to be forced to pay 18% out the gate for lackluster service and food I could’ve made at home. Dare I say it: You typically see this at Black-owned Atlanta restaurants more so than other establishments. Is it because there’s a stigma that we don’t tip? Is the business owner trying to use you as a come-up to make more money? I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s whack and it reeks of anti-Blackness. So I’m calling you out, enough is enough.
Ninety minutes and you gotsta go: That’s the rule of thumb at many of these restaurants. The thought is, we don’t want you holding up our table. I was at a venue recently and even though we were finished eating, we were still ordering drinks. But I could feel the burn of someone watching the table. With about five minutes to spare from our original reservation — we were given our check and were told politely that it was time for us to go because there were other reservations. I’ve noticed this on the bottom of several menus at various restaurants. Unfortunately, they’ve all been Black-owned. I don’t know what the policy was beforehand or how other restaurants keep reservations on track, but they do. And they manage to do it without rushing you to scarf down your food that took so long to come out in the first place.
And how are these restaurants rushing patrons when they’re taking their time serving our food? I don’t know if the same person who took the order is making the drinks, cooking the food, plating it and serving it. But that is the only explanation I can come up with as to why it often takes so long for your meal to be served. I get it: Good help is hard to find, and I also understand peak dining hours. However, don’t expect me to dine and dash if your service is slow out of the gate.
Why is the music so damn loud? If you expect to have a decent conversation with the person you are dining with, don’t dine in Atlanta. I’m telling you: You will find yourself shouting at the waiter and other people in your dining party because the music is simply too damn loud. And no, it’s not soothing instrumentals playing in the background. It’s trap music. I’m talking about The Migos, A$AP, Future and anyone else whose music bumps. Many of the restaurants now book DJs Thursday through Sunday, and they don’t give a damn about you or the conversation you’re trying to have.
Also reminiscent of the club, is the hookah experience. One, I don’t care to have a hookah while dining. Why is this even a thing? Some of these places even have hookah girls who walk around pushing hookah flavors all night. And to be clear, when I say I don’t want a hookah, I don’t want to smoke it, sit next to it or walk through a cloud of it. In my Nene Leakes voice, “I said what I said” and I don’t want hookah. Take that outside.
If you can get past the DJs and the hookahs, brace yourself for the patrons. The respect level of fine dining is at an all-time low. I was in one R&B singer’s popular restaurant, and a young lady decided to back that thang up. But only after being instructed by the DJ, of course. Oh, and it gets better: Once she dropped into a split, a gentleman sitting at the bar came over to make it rain on her. I was in sheer amazement that this was going down on a Sunday early afternoon. Children were present, as were older adults. And I was simply trying to enjoy my chicken and red velvet waffles. Hey, I like what I like. But what I can’t get with is the attempted resurrection of Club 112 when I’m just trying to eat my food.
Some of these spots have their own parking lots. However, they charge you upwards of $20 to park your car “unattended,” and we all know what goes down in Atlanta parking lots. Oh, and if you have a nice car that you want attended, they offer to charge you $40 to park it upfront. The nicer your ride, the closer you get to the door, the better the service and since no one wants to come out to their window bashed in, you pay the fee.
If you’re a real foodie like I am, you look at the menu before you get to the restaurant. Picture this: You have your heart set on the Oxtail pasta. Mouth-watering, drinks flowing (in your plastic cup) at $15 a pop. Then you get ready to order only to learn, “Ain’t no more oxtails.” Wait, what? Then ensues a fun game of guessing what else they don’t have that’s on the menu. Now, you’re approaching a $100 between parking, drinks and gratuity, and you have to order some lackluster $30 shrimp alfredo that you could’ve cooked at home. That’s Atlanta for ya.
Last but certainly doing the most, can y’all please have these women put on some clothes? I don’t mean the patrons, I mean the waitresses and bartenders. I don’t want to see your boobs, your belly and especially not your behind. I know it’s big, and I realize good money was spent for many of them, but I don’t want to see them while I’m eating this cold salmon and sweet potato mash that I really didn’t come here for. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I don’t want any of this.
Listen, Black dining in Atlanta hasn’t always been this way. There was a time when it was obvious that staff had been properly trained. They were polite, prompt and well-groomed. There was a time when you could expect quality food at fair pricing and family-friendly atmospheres no matter what time of day you chose to dine. I love Atlanta. We are a beautiful, budding city with Black wealth that everyone seems to love. Just ask the traffic on I-75 at any time of day, but I digress.
I get it, the cost of inflation is hitting us all, but I know the entrepreneurs behind these businesses can do their part to turn things around and once again, make Atlanta a premier Southern dining destination. The bottom line is that Black patrons shouldn’t be subjected to subpar service by our own people. In fact, that’s where we should be treated like royalty. There are a number of spots that still get it right: Paschals, Mary Mac’s, Twisted Soul and a few others. Take a page out of their playbooks. It’s the only way to recover from our current notorious reputation of grass walls, overbearing hookahs and mediocre food and service.
Elise Roberts is the executive producer of news & programming for theGrio, a division of Allen Media Group. In her current role she oversees several hours of programming for “TheGrio with Eboni K. Williams,” “TheGrio Weekly with Natasha Alford” and “The Hill With April Ryan.”
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