This Top Chef Alum Is Writing an Unexpected Message On His Restaurant's Receipts
His receipts convey much more than just the price of your meal.
Top Chef alum Mark Simmons has earned lots of buzz for the unusual restaurant he opened in Brooklyn after competing on Season 4. Called Kiwiana, it serves New Zealand cuisine, which is typically very hard to find at U.S. restaurants. But now Simmons is getting attention for another bold move: He's printing a pro-immigrant message on Kiwiana's guest receipts.
The message says, “Immigrants make America great (they also cooked your food and served you today)."
Simmons is an immigrant himself: He came to the U.S. from New Zealand. And like many restaurant owners, chefs and food-industry workers in New York City and across the country, the contested travel ban has led him to voice public support for immigrants, whose hard work fuels the entire restaurant industry. Even since before the ban, Trump's comments about immigrants have caused chefs to speak out. "I think his stance on immigration can deeply affect food in this country," Top Chef head judge Tom Colicchio said in a Daily Beast article.
It's worth noting that journalist Mary Emily O'Hara, the Kiwiana guest who tweeted the receipt that's now going viral, got met with some raised-eyebrow replies about the $48 breakfast tab. But she tweeted back, defending the prices as a normal cost of a good (read: booze-fueled) brunchtime in NYC:
(Via GrubStreet)
