A Connecticut restaurant called the Red Hen has received “threatening” messages from people confused with an identically named Virginia eatery that refused White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders service.
Owner Shelley Deproto tells the Hartford Courant the Old Saybrook restaurant has received dozens of angry phone messages and negative reviews from people across the country since Saturday.
“It was just a quaint little name,” Deproto said of the Red Hen, chosen from a children’s story about a hen that baked cakes and pastries.
But it was that name that exposed her to anger she had not seen before, that left her shaken and unnerved and a little discouraged.
“They said, ‘You’re done, and we’re coming to get you,’ ” she recalled. “It was ominous. The rage — there was such rage.”
Deproto says callers ignored her when she explained that her restaurant isn’t affiliated with the Virginia restaurant.
The owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Va., asked Sanders to leave the restaurant Friday, citing the concerns of employees.
Deproto’s Yelp rating plunged from a 4.5 out of 5 to a 2. She says Yelp has agreed to remove some of the posts.
Another Red Hen in New Jersey had a similar problem. And so did a Washington, D.C., restaurant called, you guessed it, the Red Hen.
That restaurant battled Twitter trolls Monday morning, explaining it had no affiliation with the Virginia restaurant, and pointing to a federal ordinance barring discrimination due to political affilation.
Hartford Courant and Tribune reporting contributed.
