Delhi restaurant stops woman from entering, says saree is not smart casual
A high-end restaurant in Delhi has found itself under strong criticism on social media after a woman was banned entry because she was wearing a saree.
Anita Choudaary, creative director at Doordarshan National, shared her disappointment on Facebook with a video attached to it that shows how the staffs of Aquila restaurant at Ansal Plaza denied entry to her because of her attire.
In the video, Anita stands behind the camera and repeatedly asks the restaurant staffs, “show me that saree is not allowed.” to which the employee replies, “we allow only smart casual and saree doesn’t comes under smart casual”
The video has garnered a lot of attention making the netizens furious over the eatery staffs behavior. The video also surfaced on Twitter and other social media platforms due to which the restaurant is receiving heavy backlash. The eatery is also receiving negative remarks on food aggregator platforms like Zomato.
This is the lady who was denied entry at Aquila Restaurant, New Delhi for being dressed in a saree as according to the deracinated colonial slave hostess, saree is not ‘smart casual’! Most bizarre thing I heard! https://t.co/Kp9AjmiJb2
— Shefali Vaidya. 🇮🇳 (@ShefVaidya) September 22, 2021
I Condemn the behavior of Aquila Restaurant staff. How can they declare Saree not Smart enough to enter a restaurant.
Shame on #Aquila #Restaurant #Delhi #India #LoveSaree #BoycottAquila#IStandWithIndia #KangnaRanaut #ModiInAmerica #ValimaiPongal #COVISHIELD https://t.co/ujOopwnXGE— Devyani Kohli (@DevyaniKohli1) September 22, 2021
On Wednesday, the Aquila took to it’s Instgram page to share a post clarifying their side of the story. The statement read, “We chose to stay silent till now and have been patiently watching the situation related to the incident that took place at Aquila on the 19th of September unfold. At Aquila, we believe in honouring our Indian community and have always welcomed our guests in all dress codes from modern to traditional. Currently, a 10 second clip has been circulating in the media showing only a small snippet of what happened during a period of 1 hour here on Sunday.”
“A guest visited the restaurant and was politely requested to wait at the gate as there was no reservation under her name. However, while we discussed internally as to where we could seat them, the guest entered the restaurant and began to fight and abuse our staff. What unfolded after was beyond our imagination, with the guest slapping our manager as you can see in the CCTV video footage attached in our post above,” the statement added.
On the next slide, it added a small CCTV footage that shows a woman slapping a staff member who according to the restaurant was their manager.
The note further reads, “We believe in utmost transparency and are hence attaching snippets of people who have visited our restaurant in a traditional dress code previously. To tackle the situation and request the guest to leave, one of our gate managers made a statement on sarees not being a part of our smart casual dress code and our whole team apologies for the same. Aquila is a homegrown brand and each member of the team stands tall as a proud Indian. Our gate managers statement in noway is a representation of the entire teams view on the dress code. Nowhere in our company policy does it say that we will refuse entry to anybody in ethnic wear. While we have all the right to take grated steps for the violence by the guest against our staff, we have chose to maintain peace so far but in accordance with our policy of maintaining transparency with our stakeholders we are now issuing this statement.”
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In the follow up slide it also shows how women in sarees are entering the eatery.
Kalinga AI