MUST SEE TV: Black Restaurant Owner Who Falsely Cried Racism Apologizes For Playing Race Card
The episode of FOX’s Kitchen Nightmares that originally aired on February 2nd, 2012 featured a look at struggling restaurant Park’s Edge in Inman Park, Georgia (an upscale suburb of Atlanta). This is a show where celebrity chef Gordan Ramsey travels the country salvaging establishments from ruin, usually because the owners had no clue what they were doing when they decided to open a restaurant.
That’s exactly what happened with Park’s Edge, because co-owners Richard Wadlington Jr. and Jorge Pacheco had no restaurant training or experience when they decided to get into the business. As one of their staff members explained on the show, these guys were longtime friends who had a little money saved up between them and decided, “Why not open a restaurant. It can’t be that hard.”
Wadlington was chiefly responsible for their failure because from the start he had no real plan or concept of what Park’s Edge brand would be. Located in a crisp and affluent part of town, they ended up being a “garbage plate” special sort of dive that seems more appropriate for a college town where it would be open 24 hours and have a little bit of everything randomly scattered around a menu. Here in Chicago there’s a restaurant like this called Clarke’s, which has Asian items, burritos and tacos, big bowls of pasta, burgers, meatloaf, and every sandwich imaginable available for order at any time of day — but it works because it doesn’t aspire to be anything more than a little dive where anything imaginable is orderable whenever people want it…and it’s located in a part of town where people don’t expect the place to be fancy.
Well, Park’s Edge encountered problems from the beginning because patrons expected refinement and instead found garbage plate randomness. Wadlington called this “fusion”, but that’s a culinary concept where chefs harmoniously blend the distinct styles and flavor profiles of two or more different cuisines to create new dishes inspired by and reflective of the originals. Most commonly, you’d probably experience fusion cooking when you’d go to a restaurant like Ping Pong here in Chicago’s Boystown — which is not a Chinese restaurant, but a pan-Asian fusion kitchen where items distinctive to Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean, and other cooking styles complement one another on the menu.
What Wadlington did at Park’s Edge was shove some Indian dishes, a few Mexican things, and some stir fry together and call that chimera fusion — when it was really just cut and paste randomness while piecing together a menu without any sense of cohesion (or clue in Hell what he was doing). It was a complete amateur hour affair.
Then, for whatever reason, Wadlington didn’t believe Atlanta’s permit department applied to him and he decided to erect a big tent in the parking lot and call it a patio and served liquor there without a license. Neighbors complained about that, and the general poor quality of what Park’s Edge served, and so Wadlington went on television and called anyone who didn’t like his food a racist.
He actually went on local television and said that the reason people didn’t patronize his restaurant was because he was a black man in a white neighborhood so clearly it just had to be that his new neighbors were all racists — and it had nothing to do with the fact that he was incompetent, in over his head, and so full of himself that he couldn’t foresee the disaster he made worse on a daily basis. Wait a minute — are we talking about Wadlington, or Barack Obama? It’s eerie how alike those with Race Industry mentality are when they cry racism to distract from their own personal and professional failings.
Well, after this fool went on TV and called his patrons racists, business collapsed and Wadlington suffered great consequences for slamming his race card on the (now empty) dining room table. People don’t like being called racists when they are not, just because they disagree with a black person on something (like how good his food — or his presidency — is). Park’s Edge was a few weeks away from having to close the restaurant before Chef Ramsey stepped in to turn things around — and Ramsey’s first order of business was forcing Wadlington to appear again on the local news, but this time to tell all of Atlanta how stupid he was to cry racism and invent this destructive fiction to distract from his own incompetence.
After he did that, all was forgiven — and all the people who were supposedly so virulently racist graciously gave Park’s Edge another chance in the spirit of that forgiveness.
To his credit, Wadlington seems like a very nice man. I watch a lot of these restaurant turn-around shows and have seen some pretty terrible people featured, and Wadlington’s not one of them. From what I saw of him in this episode, it doesn’t appear that Wadlington is cut from the same cloth as the “Justice Brothers” of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson…and he’s not a malicious and prodigious liar like Henry Gates when it comes to inventing racism where none exists to explain away everything bad he does in life. It really seems like Wadlington just kept making mistakes out of pure ignorance because he had zero restaurant experience before setting up shop. As the consequences of those mistakes mounted, Wadlington couldn’t take the strain this caused and just snapped one day in front of a TV camera and tapped into the black community’s default conspiracy that “if there’s no other explanation then it must just be racism”.
This is interesting because I imagine it happens in 90% of the cases where someone screams racism without first sitting down and proactively deciding ahead of time that this is what they’re going to do on Wednesday of next week at 1230 pm to solve their problems or get negative attention (you know, the way the Justice Brothers and others in the Race Industry do). Wadlington blurted out “it’s racism!” without really thinking about it, the way some people out there scream “it’s the Bilderberg Group!” to explain something vexing that happened in politics.
I suspect there is only a very small handful of black people out there like Sharpton, Jackson, Obama, Gates, and Eric Holder who knowingly lie and invent racism as a political and business strategy — but I wonder how many black people are like Wadlington and allow the conspiracy of RAAACISM! to be their default cry when they’re in over their heads and aren’t emotionally prepared to admit all their problems are their own fault.
Crying racism was a coping mechanism for Wadlington on his path to facing the reality that his business was going under, when he was still too emotionally brittle to assume the responsibility for driving Park’s Edge off a cliff through gross incompetence.
Unlike those in the Race Industry, Wadlington ultimately apologized for falsely accusing tens of thousands of people of being racists just because he didn’t know how to run a restaurant and it showed. He more than redeemed himself by going on television and admitting what a fool he was to do that — and I hope he set a precedent that’s expected in the future whenever the race card is slammed down by someone like him who was looking for a default scapegoat.
We need more Richard Wadlington Jrs and fewer Jesse Jacksons — and we as a collective public need to start forcing ALL of these hucksters onto the TV to apologize whenever they falsely cry racism to deflect blame or promote ulterior motives.
© 2012, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
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That is great to hear that we have some fight vs. PC
and false, BS rrrrrrrrrrraaaaacccccccciiiiiiiisssssssssmmmmmm
Well written, Kevin… as usual.
Interesting. That place is down the street from me, but I've never been there. Inman park, however, is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the city, and a wonderful neighborhood, and really? they're racists…wow.
I've never been there because I don't know anyone who's ever been there, so no one has ever said: have you been to that place down the street? it's great. so I stay mostly in my neighborhood, because we have fantastic stuff here !!!.
I have been to a few of the restaurants near by, too, but again, don't go there often because they are not right next door. I don't go far away!
Interesting analysis, Kevin, given that the city of atlanta dept of whatever is mostly black. it's just the way the city is run.
They don't necessarily enforce stuff much, though, so if they are – that's interesting to me. My neighbors have been trying to get the enforcement people out to help for a while now!
Another excellent post, Kevin. I have seen this attitude in from blacks in Kansas City, MO over the years too!
(Hey! An old friend of mine who now lives in Houston just started a new Facebook Group named Cleveland-what I liker about you, but you eschew Facebook iIsee. Oh well.)
Can you give me the link?
I would love to see that.
I don’t use Facebook in my personal life but I do monitor it to see what the Tolerant Left is saying and doing on there so I might be logged onto Facebook more than you might realize. I will check it out.
Loved this article…I am a huge fan of Gordon Ramsey. Yes, he is full of curse words and his persona on Hell's Kitchen is not fantastic, but if you watch Kitchen Nightmares or The F Word, you see his passion for culinary excellence.
He is one of very few people who could have made this chef do this without suffering further consequences himself.
Ramsey is WONDERFUL on “The F-Word” — and for those who don’t know, the “F” in that stands for food…and it’s is a FANTASTIC show that’s a little bit like the old Martha Stewart show before she went to jail. Ramsey visits different places where food is grown or made…then there’s a bit where he gets a group of amateurs to compete to see who can cook the best dish…and he has these friends of his on to talk about odd or interesting foods or restaurants. It’s such a great show and Ramsey goes for “charming and kind of adorable” on it instead of screaming at people.
On Kitchen Nightmares, Ramsey doesn’t scream all that much — except at people who have bugs or rodents in their kitchens or serve spoiled food.
I don’t like Hell’s Kitchen because of the contestants — they are always so low-rent and have weird attitudes. I think the rejects who don’t even get on-camera interviews for Top Chef are the talent pool that Hell’s Kitchen casts from.
I just can’t stand that show, and I love competitive cooking shows.
Fascinating that Chef Ramsey chose to start the restaurant's rehab with the apology.
Kevin, I love your turn of phrase … "something vexing that happened in politics" … heh, something of an understatement, eh?
After reading the article I think that what concerns me the most is that Wadlington actually believes that racism was responsible for his ills. He went to that reasoning on local media and seems to have stood by it until Ramsay brought his restaurent education course to him. I don't know too much about this story (except for the article) but I wonder whether deep inside, Mr. Wadlington stills feels that racism was responsible for at least part of his problems.
Another thing that’s interesting about the “they’re not eating here because they are racists!” garbage is that I doubt 90% of people would know that a black man owned the restaurant. With few exceptions, I don’t know who owns any of the restaurants I like to eat at…unless it’s someone I know personally or it’s a chef who has a brand recognition.
Do YOU know who who owns the restaurants or bars you like to go to? I doubt it.
People come to restaurants for the food. If they food is good and it’s a good price for the experience, people will come and eat there. If the food is bad, people won’t come. I know for a fact that people will even tolerate terrible service if the food is great. There’s a few places in Chicago that have sandwiches or other dishes I really love and I am willing to tolerate the place being loud and the wait being long or the staff being awful if I know I can eat whatever that thing is they make that is so good.
I don’t there are all that many people in Atlanta who would say, “I don’t want to eat that delicious food at that restaurant because a black man owns it”.
That’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
Nobody cares what color your damn self is. Get over it.
why is it only blacks and people of color allowed to cry racism?