A South Carolina restaurant owner is trying to deal with the backlash generated by his shoddy treatment — captured on video — recently of a couple who had complained about overcooked pork chops.
Posted on TikTok, where it has generated nearly 4,000 comments, the video starts with the owner, Christopher Phillip Wallman Jr., making the following announcement to all of his customers at The Grill, a restaurant in Manning, South Carolina, about 90 miles inland from Charleston: “I want everybody to hear this now. This lovely couple has ordered $137 of food that they’re refusing to pay.”
The couple fought back, saying they were only asking for the fried pork chops they rejected — “fried hard,” the woman says — to be removed from their tab.
“If we pay $140, we want our food cooked right, that’s all,” said the husband, a Black disabled veteran.
The owner told the other patrons that the couple had “complained about every single thing” and then asked them, loud enough for everyone to hear, “This is what I want from y’all.”
“I will not be bullied by customers in my own restaurant,” Wallman said. “We want you to walk out the door and never come in this restaurant again.”
The couple agreed, defusing the tension. But customers say they were unsettled by the incident. And some have fired back with scathing reviews of the fledgling eatery.
“Walked by this place and decided to pop in,” wrote one diner on Yelp. “Some fat guy who looks like he just rolled off a park bench was trying to shame a veteran and his wife because his ‘chef’ doesn’t know how to cook pork chops. …”
“You couldn’t pay me to attempt to eat the overcooked meat this fat guy who looks like he rolled of a park bench deals out to these poor customers,” he continued. “Take your money somewhere where they know how to cook a pork chop, which is by far the easiest thing on god’s green earth to cook. Shame on this dump.”
One woman from California was appalled by the lack of basic customer service skills.
The way you tried to publicly embarrass them and make EVERY other person in that establishment at the same time feel uncomfortable was just completely unprofessional, disgusting, rude, sickening, and overall an absolute pathetic display of ownership I’ve EVER witnessed,” she said. “You sir, do NOT belong in the hospitality or food industry. If you can’t take criticism of your food, and respect your customers or just people in general, do something else.
“Even a little man like you should understand that,” she added. “Apologies go a long way and this couple and all of those people in that establishment that day deserve one from you!!”
Wallman did offer an apology on Facebook, but not to the couple’s face.
“I have said before and I’ll say again for everyone new — I apologize for reacting to that couple the way I did,” he wrote. There are several circumstances that occur before she started filming that ya’ll don’t see and that doesn’t excuse my reaction at all but that does explain why it happened.
“It has nothing to do with race, color, creed, religion, nothing,” he concluded.
But Yelp reviewers tell a different story.
“Went here and the food was horrible. They tried to charge me for food that didn’t even come,” wrote one woman. “And to find out- this is a normal practice for people of color at this establishment.”
Many people who followed the story noted that Wallman never actually apologized to the couple, even after realizing they were being charged for the pork chops.
