What began as a bun fight over a burger on Facebook ended in a public stoush with a Pokolbin restaurant owner slamming a vegan customer’s convictions as Nazi-like.
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The uproar started after Mark Clews, co-owner of Tuk Tuk Restaurant, took to Facebook after a customer inquired about the lack of vegan choices on the menu.
Mr Clews said on Facebook he had warned the woman the pattie might contain traces of slaughtered animals because it would be cooked on the same grill as other burgers.
“But she happily ate it anyway,” he wrote on the restaurant’s Facebook page. “Guess she wasn’t that vegan after all.”
But the customer saw the Facebook comments, realised it was she who was being spoken about and replied that Mr Clews did not inform her of where the burger would be cooked.
In his Facebook entry, Mr Clews said: “Vegans are so easy to mess with. They lack the physical strength because of zero red meat in their diet.
“Their ‘veganism’ was inspired by some tragic childhood event, or a divorce, or a car accident, or some crap.
“They are single-minded and Nazi-like in their conviction.
“The worst thing, from a chef’s point of view, is they cannot cook a vegetable to save their life.”
The row was on – and vegans responded in fury.
One Facebook user wrote on the page: “Did you honestly compare a vegan to a Nazi?”
Others questioned how a restaurant could treat its customers in such a manner.
Mr Clews said he had been bombarded with abuse since the incident, and had received death threats and abusive phone calls to his mobile phone number.
The restaurant owner denied he had been disrespectful to the customer and that “a lot of lies had been told on the internet”.
“It was a humorous anecdote. I was surprised by the indignation and if the girl was offended, I am sorry,” Mr Clews wrote.
“We are a very small restaurant we don’t have the facilities to clean off the hot plate with caustic soda and add oil again every time.”
Mr Clews said vegans were “Hezbollah-like in their hatred of people who eat meat”.
He said he was an animal lover with a “house like a zoo”.
The Mercury was unable to contact the customer yesterday.