A St. Paul School Board member was asked by police to leave a Golden Valley restaurant Monday for alleged unruly conduct.
Chauntyll Allen posted a video of the incident on her Facebook page, saying she was discriminated against because she is Black.
Allen was dining at Benihana, a Japanese hibachi grill restaurant, with a group of women for her birthday. She and others at the table said they felt the table wasn’t clean, so they asked the manager to wipe it down.
The manager offered to move the party to a different table. The group refused to move and several pulled out cell phones to record the interaction. Allen called on her social media following to come out to the restaurant to support her.
After members of the group shouted at the manager as she attempted to answer their questions, they were eventually asked to leave the restaurant. The group refused, calling it a “sit-in” and said the restaurant was discriminating against them.
“She picked up this white supremacy, this white lady silencing, and went silent and don’t even want to respond to us now,” Allen said about their Asian server in the video. Allen did not immediately return messages for comment Tuesday.
Allen in the video threatened to do to Benihana what she did to Joe’s Crab Shack in 2016 in which she said she was offended by a picture of an 1895 hanging of a Black man in Texas used as décor. She complained to the NAACP and the restaurant apologized and removed the photo.
When the group refused to leave Benihana, the manager told them that their tab had been taken care of and then called the police.
Two Golden Valley police officers were called to the restaurant at 4:33 p.m. Monday on a report of “customer trouble.”
Two officers arrived and listened to both parties. One officer explained that Allen and her group were at a private establishment and if they did not leave, as they were asked, they could be charged with trespassing.
When Allen insinuated that they were being discriminated against, the officer said in Allen’s video that he didn’t think that was what was happening.
The group left, and no enforcement action was taken.
A manager at Benihana said the restaurant had “no comment at this time.”