A London restaurant owner defended his menu that tells customers only ordering water with their meals that he is “not running a charity”.
Danish steakhouse Köd in Spitalfields has a £30 per head, all-you-can-eat roast on Sundays, boasting nobody goes home hungry.
But one customer who visited with her boyfriend took to X, formerly Twitter, to accuse restaurateur Morten Ortwed of “guilt-tripping” patrons at the eatery near London Liverpool Street station. (They have since deleted the post).
A note on the menu says: “You can have tap water but please remember we’re running a restaurant, not a charity - wink, wink.
“If you want to have just tap water, we encourage you to donate £1 to Red Cross. Everybody wins.”
The couple from Essex, who spent £60 and paid a 15 per cent tip due to great service, “made a point” of not buying a drink because of the sign and instead ordered a jug of tap water.
Baffled Mr Morten, 38, told the Standard: “The Sunday roast has proved really popular but if we are to continue and employ staff, people can’t only order tap water.
“Some are taking the all-you-can-eat really seriously, having over 800g to one kilo of meat per person.
“If everyone does that without ordering drinks, it will not be good business for us.”
He added: “We didn’t want to put a limit on what people could eat, so I used a bit of Dutch ironic humour to make a serious point.
“This is the first complaint we’ve had - but there’s nothing bad about charity.
“I was a little bit surprised. We are not forcing anyone to pay £1, it’s only if they want to donate.”
Mr Morten, of Skanderborg, Denmark, moved to the UK with his wife and two children to open the London branch this year after more than a decade in his home country and Norway.
He is a Red Cross ambassador which is stated on the menu instructing customers to inform waiters if they wish to donate.
