A Mississippi eatery that appeared on Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-ins and, Dives” is facing backlash after its owners posted a video offering “something free” to only straight couples that stopped by to eat at the Cajun joint on Tuesday.
Controversy quickly engulfed Darwell’s Happiness Café in Long Beach when Darwell Yeager and his wife Nettie Mechelle made the anti-LGBTQ pitch to customers on their social media page.
“If you come in and you’re a couple … husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, guy, girl couple, the real kind of couple,” Darwell Yeager said before his spouse cut in and said, “Because we don’t do the trans or the lesbian or gays, I’m sorry.”
“When you come in for the next hour and a half and you are a couple, can-produce-a-child couple, we’ll give you something free,” Darwell Yeager concluded in the since-deleted video that has spread online.
The restaurant special was torched — including by fellow local food establishments.
“I have very recently watched a disgusting video put out by Darwell about his Tuesday ‘couples’ special. I am almost speechless. Almost,” Trax Bar and Grill, which is less than two miles from Darwell’s, wrote on Facebook this week.
“His weird antics were tolerable at best until this video but not anymore.”
A corporate executive chef for a local restaurant group that runs seven restaurants also spoke out, according to NOLA.com.
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but all in all, you reap what you sow,” Lauren Joffrion, of Secret Coast Restaurant Group, said on Facebook. “Hate gets you nowhere.”
Gulf Coast Equality, an LGBT non-profit, called the social media post “disheartening” and suggested a boycott of Darwell’s.
“If Darwell’s won’t welcome us, we won’t support them,” the board wrote in a statement. “We’ll make the impact felt where it counts. We call on our community to come together—not just in outrage, but in action.”
A woman who picked up the phone at a number listed for Nettie Yeager declined comment when reached by The Post.
The couple later apologized on Facebook, according to NOLA.com and the Clarion Ledger.
“I would like to apologize to all my friends. If I wrote or said something that offended you… I’m not perfect… I say thing (sic) people don’t understand, misread, misunderstood, jokes maybe I shouldn’t say, get upset and say something I should have thought twice before saying.. I’m not perfect and I get my feelings hurt too,” Nettie Yeager wrote, according to the Ledger.
Most of the social media posts tied to the couple’s accounts were made private Thursday night so it’s unclear if the apology remained up.
Darwell Yeager also posted before the reported mea culpa that he was tired of being bullied by the left and is restaurant wouldn’t fail, NOLA.com reported.
The café has appeared in Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” at least twice since it’s been in business.
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