Restaurants can take some pretty unbelievable fees onto a meal, but it’s rare that they will simply eat your food.
Over the years, many internet users have complained about things like “cake-cutting fees.” For example, one user claimed they charged her $25 for a restaurant to cut a cake that she brought.
However, a TikToker is alleging that a New York City eatery has taken this idea to the next level. He says they not only refused to let him cut his own cake, but ate half of it too.
Did this restaurant eat half of this man’s cake?
In a video with over 4 million views, TikTok user Ryan Nordheimer (@ryannordheimer) explains why he believes the staff ate half of a birthday cake.
Nordheimer is a baker who says he spent five or six hours making a cake for his friend’s birthday. The cake was a substantial size, and he personally valued the cake and the time it took to make it at several hundred dollars.
Excited to give the cake to his friend, he called a New York restaurant to see if he could personally cut the cake and give out slices but was told that would be “a safety hazard, so they ended up taking the cake back into the kitchen to serve it.”
When it came time for the cake, the staff presented it. Then, as promised, they took it into the kitchen to divide it into slices. However, when the slices arrived, he claims they were incredibly small.
“We’re looking at a few millimeters of thickness,” Nordheimer states.
“So just doing some rough estimation, there were 12 of us at the dinner. If we’re each served a slice about this size or maybe it’s a little bigger, that’s gonna be about half that of that massive cake,” he continues. “Definitely not all the cake was served to us.”
No cake left
Given this, when it came time to end the dinner, Nordheimer requested the rest of the cake.
“They just say that there’s no cake left,” Nordheimer shares in disbelief.
“So the only explanation is that this high-end New York City midtown steakhouse took the cake back into the kitchen, cut all of us meager slices of cake to eat, and they had just eaten the rest of it for themselves,” he adds.
While Nordheimer says he has sympathy for restaurant workers who might want a treat while on the job, he’s disappointed his friend now can’t enjoy the cake he baked for him. Not to mention, especially because something similar had happened to the friend in the past.
“Maybe in the future, we’ll just be serving the cakes at our apartments because clearly New York City restaurants steal cakes,” he concludes.
@ryannordheimer Replying to @Nela P cake theft is at an all time high in New York City 😱😱😱 . . . #recipe #viral #privatechef #aesthetic #france #cookbook #frenchfood #newyorkfood #cake #nyc #newyork #confetti #frosting #layercake #nycfoodie #nycfoodblogger #nycfood #creator #brooklyn #pistachio #birthdaycale #ryannordheimer#greenscreen ♬ original sound – Ryan Nordheimer
Commenters share their thoughts
While Nordheimer didn’t mention the name of the restaurant, many speculated about which it could be based on the photos. The Daily Dot has reached out to some of these locations to see if any will confirm.
Regardless, several commenters claimed that they had experienced something similar.
“My hubby and I got all of our leftover wedding cake stolen from us by a friend of a friend… we discovered it the next day when we get home and was craving another slice of our wedding cake before freezing it,” recalled a user. “Got on Facebook to find the lady that stole it and saw she was serving it to her church along with a bunch of our decorations!!!!”
“As a server this happened to me before, we the servers more often than not don’t cut it, I gave it to the chef to cut and gave out the plated slices and when I went back after asking them to box the rest, the cake was gone and I threw a fit,” added another. “I cursed them out and then sent my manager over to chew them out then had her talk to the table, apologize and do comps on the check.”
“The same thing happened to me! My daughter brought a beautiful, very expensive cake to my surprise 60th birthday party at a restaurant. The waiter actually commented on what a delicious cake it was!” exclaimed a third.
The Daily Dot reached out to Nordheimer via email.
Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
