Regular says she was banned from eating at the bar at Manhattan's fancy Nello restaurant because she might be a sex-worker

After marketing executive Clementine Crawford published an essay about being banned from eating at the bar at her favorite New York restaurant, Nello, because the owner (already notorious for labor abuses) was "cracking down on escorts" and had decreed that only men would be permitted to dine at the bar, The Cut tried to get a comment on it from Balan, whose employees repeatedly hung up on them.

According to Crawford, when she told the owner that his policy was unfair and discriminatory and reminded him that she was a regular who'd spent a small fortune eating at his bar, the owner said "he could run his business as he pleased, and that I was no longer welcome to eat at the bar, only at a table."

I travel a lot and one of my favorite things to do when I'm out of town is "take myself out on a date." Often I've been in intensely social situations all day, speaking to a crowd, or being in close company with a group of colleagues, and -- hermit that I am -- I'm ready for some solo time.

So I'll go to a nice restaurant, the kind of place you usually need a reservation for, and just get a seat at the bar, where I can eyeball the whisky selection and find a really nice one to sample, and then I order stinky things that I normally avoid because my wife won't kiss me after I've eaten them (she's allergic to shellfish, so this is my chance to eat a lot of oysters). Read the rest