In an interview with The New York Times, British “comedian” and TV host James Corden responded to the claims he was “abusive” to staff at Balthazar’s restaurant in New York.
Corden said he hasn’t “done anything wrong, on any level”. Lettuce unpack.
ICYMI, restaurateur Keith McNally recently slammed Corden via Insta. McNally described Corden as a “tiny cretin of a man” and “the most abusive customer to my Balthazar servers since the restaurant opened 25 years ago”.
He said he’d banned Corden from the restaurant. However, he then made a follow up post announcing he’d un-banned Corden after the bloke apologised to him.
Corden shrugged off the idea that he’d cancel the New York Times interview — which was organised prior to the situation — in the wake of McNally’s allegations.
“I haven’t done anything wrong, on any level. So why would I ever cancel this?” he said.
“I was there. I get it. I feel so Zen about the whole thing. Because I think it’s so silly.
“I just think it’s beneath all of us. It’s beneath you. It’s certainly beneath your publication.”
That’s certainly a way to think about treating hospitality staff terribly.
At the top of the interview, Corden and journo Dave Itzkoff were having breakfast when a woman near them told off a waiter over the eggs she’d ordered.
After hearing the woman complain about her eggs, Corden said to his interviewer: “Happens every day. It’s happening in 55,000 restaurants as we speak”.
“It’s always about eggs.
“Can you imagine now, if we just blasted her on Twitter? Would that be fair? This is my point. It’s insane.”
Some crucial context here: one of the managers’ reports posted by McNally centred around an egg yolk omelette ordered by Corden’s wife.
According to the report, there was a bit of egg white mixed in the yolk. Sacré bleu! The kitchen remade the omelette but accidentally sent it back with fries instead of salad.
“That’s when James Corden began yelling like crazy to the server: ‘You can’t do your job! You can’t do your job! Maybe I should go into the kitchen and cook the omelette myself!’” McNally wrote.
Truly wild scenes.
Corden also said he’d probably address the incident in an upcoming episode of The Late Late Show, but that he hadn’t “really read anything” about it.
He reckoned most people wouldn’t know about the sitch, saying that not a single person in New York had approached him to talk about the Balthazar of it all.
To be fair, it would be slightly weird to approach a random man on the street and ask if he actually yelled at service workers over some egg.
