The Red Hen, a little restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, has made national headlines after the owner asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave the restaurant on Friday.
The owner made the decision to ask Sanders to leave after her staff told her they were uncomfortable serving the Press Secretary. The incident has caused cries of praise and denouncement from both sides of the political spectrum.
Even President Trump weighed in today tweeting, "The Red 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. I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!"
Food critic and Senior Editor at The Atlantic Corby Kummer told Boston Public Radio Monday that the whole situation reminds him of when the cast of Hamilton spoke to Mike Pence after a performance he attended, and that the restaurant may not have needed to kick Sanders out to make their point.
“That would have been maybe another tack for this restaurant to take. You know, serving them politely. But they took a stand,” Kummer said.
While Kummer may have thought the restaurant could have handled the night differently, he does support their freedom to express their views.
“I thought it was a perfectly good thing to do,” he said.
Kummer does worry though that the restaurant may receive a lot of negative attention like Comet Ping Pong Pizza did two years age, after a conspiracy theory was spread that the restaurant housed a child sex ring run by Hillary Clinton . “I was very worried about the restaurant itself,” Kummer said.
