Renowned Chef Bans Vegans From Restaurant
If you don't want to eat meat or other animal products, celebrity chef John Mountain doesn't want to feed you. The British chef, who owns the Fyre restaurant in Perth, Australia, announced Sunday that he had banned all vegans from the establishment following a barrage of negative reviews.On Wednesday, he told PerthNow that the move had been great for business. "The bookings have gone ridiculous; they have gone through the roof," he said. "The support from people is overwhelming." Mountain claimed that "99% of chefs" hate vegans "because they're a pain in the ass, you can never please them. We've always hated vegans, all chefs have."Mountain said the ban is the result of a dispute with a vegan customer who gave the restaurant a negative review after she was served a $21 plate of vegetables instead of the gnocchi she had been promised, 7News reports. He said he accepted the customer's criticism but not the personal attacks that followed.He said he became worried about the future of his business after numerous vegans who had never been to the restaurant left negative reviews. But the campaign against him turned out to be "the best marketing that's ever happened to me," he said. Vegan activists called the ban discrimination.Mountain said that his restaurant isn't a vegan one and that vegans should go elsewhere. "I once wrote and sold a book called Pig which had pork recipes. People know what they’re getting from me," he said, per 7News. "I understand where vegans are coming from but my job is to make food taste as good as I can and I can’t always cater to everybody's dietary requirements."But the chef hasn't always been stridently anti-vegan: He has created a vegan version of fish and chips and he once toyed with the idea of opening a vegan companion restaurant to Fyre, which would have been named Urth.
Questions:1. What prompted celebrity chef John Mountain to ban vegans in his restaurant?2. Provide some details on the negative reviews coming from the vegan customers and non-customers.3. How does he feel about vegans and his job?4. Do you agree with his restriction or is it discriminatory? Why do you think so?5. Share your personal thoughts on vegans going to non-vegan restaurants.Vocabulary:1. go through the roof - to increase dramatically
