The Restaurant That Made a Customer’s Birthday Cake Disappear

Photo: Bluestocking/Getty Images

Restaurants charging customers a fee, called “cakeage,” for bringing their own cake is nothing new. One London restaurant charged $14 a slice back in 2016, the New York Times reported. (The fee can be explained by the fact that restaurants make money by selling food, and if you bring your own dessert, you are not paying them for food while still occupying tables.) On Reddit forums like r/Serverlife and r/TalesFromYourServer, fees of $1.50 to $4 per person are more commonly reported by workers. Sometimes the fees cause friction with customers, especially when they think the restaurant’s staff ate the cake.

Last week, an influencer named Ryan Nordheimer took to TikTok with an accusation that has shocked the culinary world: A restaurant stole the 15-layer confetti cake he brought in. Sort of. Maybe? In the initial video — ostensibly a Funfetti-cake tutorial — he detailed the recipe and casually dropped that “the restaurant ate half the cake themselves.” Viewers were less concerned with the triple sec in the French buttercream, obviously, and quickly focused on the allegation of cake thievery: “I’ve thought about it a few times today,” one follower admitted.

In a follow-up video responding to these concerns, Nordheimer shared that it took five to six hours to make the cake, which he valued at “several hundred dollars” and estimated to be “twice the size” of his head. But when it came time for dessert, he and his friends were served slices he deemed “a few millimeters” thick — not nearly the entire cake. When Nordheimer asked to get the rest of the cake back, they were told that would be impossible, because there was no cake left. How could this have happened? Did the cake simply disappear? No.

“The only explanation is that this high-end New York City midtown steakhouse took the cake back into the kitchen, cut all of us meager slices to eat, and they had just eaten the rest of it,” Nordheimer theorizes.

“This is so sad, I’m sorry it happened to you,” one person commented. Another declared that they have had enough: “server entitlement is crazy.”

While Nordheimer didn’t name the restaurant, online detectives who focus on uncovering these sorts of injustices determined that it could only be Quality Meats. The restaurant group confirmed it was the site of the disappearing cake in comments shared with Today; a rep for Quality Meats said “the accusations that the staff ate the cake are completely false” and that only two slices were left over. His followers haven’t been buying it, and they’ve taken to the digital streets, flooding the restaurant with negative reviews and comments. Potential customers were warned “they will steal your cake.” The staff were declared “cake thieves.” Tabloid coverage followed. The New York Post called the incident “a sweet betrayal.” Delish declared in its headline, “A TikToker Brought a Birthday Cake to a Restaurant — You’ll Never Guess What They Did With It.”

Over the weekend, Nordheimer dropped his third TikTok about the incident, suggesting that everyone “take a chill pill.” Nordheimer shared that he’d been contacted three times by the restaurant’s management, who admitted that they “neglected” to return the dessert but said that, after carefully reviewing security footage, the accusations of cake thievery are false. It was misplaced, that’s all. They also offered him a free dinner for two, presumably cake included.

Some of Nordheimer’s followers aren’t buying this company line, however; one says anyone who has “ever worked at a restaurant knows it didn’t just get misplaced or forgotten.”