UPDATE: This story is updated with interview with the restaurant owner
By Louis Chan, AsAmNews National Correspondent
Customers of the Ramen Lab Eatery in Delray Beach, Florida are rallying behind the restaurant after a confrontation with two racist customers.
AsAmNews has now learned that that person is the restaurant’s owner, Louis Grayson, who also took the video.
Grayson says a man seen wearing pink pants and eating a pizza in the video started the confrontation. According to Grayson, it was 11:45 at night and employees had already started stacking chairs in the patio as they began to close for the night.
The man in the pink pants arrived and began unstacking the chairs and sitting down with his pizza he had purchased from another business. So a waitress at the Ramen Lab Eatery explained the situation and asked him the leave.
“‘What the fuck you talking about,”‘ Grayson said the man responded to the waitress. “‘You’re a little bitch.”‘
Two male friends of that man then arrived, so Grayson said he came out to try to defuse the situation. That’s when he began recording.
In the video posted on the restaurant’s Facebook page, you can hear Grayson saying off camera “I ask you nicely to leave, that’s about it.”
“Take your f*cking Chinese flu and shove it up your ass,” a friend of the man in the pink pants responded.
“Oh, well done, sir. Well done,” Grayson responded sarcastically.
“Ch*nk mother f*cker,” said the man in the pink pants mostly off camera.
“I’m over here. What you gonna do,” said his friend apparently trying to egg Grayson into a fight.
Grayson, however, remained calm.
“Keep saying what you need to say,” he responded.
“You’re a f*cking idiot,” you mother f*cker,” the man in the pink pants said in a slurred voice. “Communist, communist.”
“I ask you nicely,” Grayson said back.
“I ask you nicely, I ask you nicely,” the man in the pink pants said in a slurred voice.
“We’re trying to close bro. Honestly, there’s benches around the corner.”
“Let’s just go,” a third customer says.
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“We have zero tolerance for violence,” the restaurant wrote on Facebook. “We are a honest hard working business. We stand against any type of racism, harassment and discrimination. We pride ourselves in having a multicultural environment. Unfortunately, this situation was very heart breaking and will not break our spirits. We will not accept this type of behavior and attack on anyone and especially to our staff. We do not tolerate any kind of hate.”
It asked anyone who recognized the men to help identify them. Grayson says one of the men seen in the first photo in this story has been identified, but he has so far not made the name public. AsAmNews is also not naming the man until we can confirm it.
Grayson says he’s overwhelmed with the love of his regular customers as well as total strangers around the world.
We’ve gotten new customers who saw this on Tiktock and Twitter. “‘We just want to come and show our support,”‘ he quoted some of them as saying. “We even had the Fire Dept come in.”
Both regular customers and strangers have also been leaving supportive comments on Ramen Lab’s Facebook page.
“If aliens landed and the only two people they spoke to were these racist humans skidmarks, they would report back there isn’t any intelligent life on earth,” responded one on Facebook.
“Please make sure your staff person knows that he has the support & admiration of *tens of thousands* of people,” wrote another.
“I hope whoever they are employed by see the video. So sad you had to go through that,” said a third.
Unfortunately, Grayson said this is not the first time something like this has happened since the outbreak of the pandemic, but he says this is the worse so far.
Grayson says he is Thai American, born and raised in Florida. He left with his family to move to England at the age of 12. He has been back in the United States since the age of 18. The 30 year old says he took on the surname of his stepfather who is British.
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