Two more bias accusations were made last week against Cesar’s Mexican restaurant on Clark Street by three Chicago gay men. During the month of September, the restaurant has been accused of anti-GLBT discrimination on four separate occasions, with victims alleging incidents occurring from May of 2002 to Sept. 14, 2003.
The latest alleged incident at Cesar’s on Clark took place on Monday, Sept. 15 when Steven Miller—a longtime patron of Cesar’s who remembers when ‘Cesar was the only one working there’—and his partner, Tony Russell, decided to dine at the restaurant. After finishing their meal and drinking one margarita each, Miller—who says their server rushed them through the dinner and acted as though he wanted them to leave—got up to use the restroom. Miller, who speaks and understands Spanish, told Windy City Times that as he exited the washroom, he thought he heard their server and a bartender joke with one another in Spanish about ‘maricones,’ a derogatory term for gays roughly equivalent to ‘faggot.’
‘At first I told myself I must be hearing things, that it was the margarita,’ Miller said. However, when Russell left for the restroom seconds later, Miller says he overheard the server and bartender comment about ‘maricones’ and ‘tatuochas,’ Spanish for tattoos (both Steven and Tony have multiple tattoos on their arms).
‘It was a very slow night—very few people were in the restaurant,’ Miller told Windy City Times. ‘When I heard ‘tatuochas’ I knew for certain they were talking about us, because there was nobody else in the place with tattoos.’ Miller said he was ‘horrified’ by what he says came next: as he was signing the credit card receipt, his waiter reportedly said loudly to the bartender, ‘Simone, es te pinche maricones.’ The waiter and bartender then allegedly laughed together. According to Miller, the English translation for the comment is roughly ‘Of course, these are fucking faggots.’
Miller reported the comment to his lover Russell, who urged Miller to complain to management. Miller said he was too shaken to do so, and the men agreed that Russell would speak to a manager about the episode.
When Russell re-entered the restaurant and asked to speak to the manager, a short Latin male wearing an apron reportedly told Russell, ‘there is no manager tonight, but can I help you?’ Russell related the night’s events to the man, who did not identify himself (Miller, who knows Cesar personally and saw him in the restaurant on Sept. 15, is positive the man with whom Russell spoke was Cesar). When Tony finished, the man said, ‘No, that did not happen. I employ many gay people.’ According to Russell, the man showed no empathy to his obvious distress, did not apologize for the experience and did not offer any compensation, such as a free meal, for their dissatisfaction. And according to Miller, Cesar was not present while the alleged verbal harassment was taking place and could not have known whether or not the incident took place.
‘He just denied it, like it was totally impossible,’ said an angry Miller. ‘He didn’t care at all. He apparently thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to insult his customers in the middle of his restaurant. And it wasn’t until later that we found out other people have complained (about alleged bias incidents at Cesar’s) recently as well.’ Miller emphatically stated that he was not intoxicated that night and did not misunderstand the implications of the remarks.
Reached at Cesar’s newest location on Broadway, family spokesman and restaurant manager Israel Sanchez had no comment on the Sept. 15 allegations.
Miller contests recent assertions by Cesar’s staff that the restaurant employs many gays. ‘That was true in the beginning,’ Miller told Windy City Times, ‘but during the past couple years, since all the condo conversions started going up on Halsted, (Boystown) is less and less gay. Most of the staff at Cesar’s now are straight men and women.’ Miller said that in his opinion, ‘gay money established (Cesar’s) and now that the business is successful, they don’t want us around anymore.’ He added angrily, ‘If that’s the way they feel, they can return every penny that any gay or lesbian person ever gave them and only serve straight people.’
Earlier last week, the restaurant was accused of discrimination by a Chicago gay man, following previous accusations that Cesar’s on Clark discriminated against a lesbian couple Aug. 31 and against another lesbian during May of 2002.
According to Pedro C., 26, some time in May 2003 he and a platonic friend, also gay, decided to dine at Cesar’s. Pedro told Windy City Times, ‘I had been there before with groups of friends and always enjoyed myself, so I thought, let’s go there.’
According to Pedro, the men were seated in a corner of the restaurant between two large parties, even though it was a weeknight and the restaurant was not busy. ‘We thought it was weird to be seated there, and we had to yell to hear each other because the other tables were noisy, so we asked the server if we could move … . There were a lot of open seats.’ The server, whom Pedro says treated him politely, declined his request to move.
When Pedro and his friend Emmanuel protested further and pointed out the availability of more comfortable seating, ‘out of nowhere’ a short Latino male wearing a white shirt and apron burst out of the kitchen, snatched the menus from the men’s hands and the placemats from the table, and told them they ‘had to go.’ ‘He was screaming so loud that everyone was noticing. I was so embarrassed,’ said Pedro. As with the Aug. 31 bias allegation, Pedro says the man with the apron challenged both men to a physical altercation, shouting at them to ‘take it outside’ as they prepared to leave.
As the men were exiting the restaurant, Emmanuel stated loudly that he could not believe they had just been kicked out, and used an expletive. At that moment, according to Pedro, the man with the apron kicked Emmanuel in the rear end, sending him sprawling. After the alleged assault on Emmanuel, Pedro shoved the man with the apron, knocking him into a table. ‘At that point I was just protecting my friend and myself,’ Pedro told Windy City Times. ‘This guy is attacking his customers and nobody else is doing anything to stop him—no servers, no bartenders, nothing? We could not believe this was happening to us.’
According to Pedro, the men did not file a police report because Emmanuel, who lives in Boston, did not want to press charges. Reluctantly, Pedro let the matter drop. ‘I am still so angry about this,’ he told Windy City Times. ‘My friends and I used to go there twice a week at least, and none of our group has gone back there since then.’ Though the altercation began over a request to switch to a different table and no anti-gay language was used, Pedro believes that the restaurant thought he and Emmanuel were a couple.
‘I thought to myself, why do I have this problem now, the first time I ever come here with just one other guy and not a group of friends? And why did they get so pissed off when we wanted to sit somewhere else?’
On Aug. 31, lesbian partners Naomi Mendoza and Melissa Johns met friends at Cesar’s for dinner. According to the women, when they began to stroke each other’s faces affectionately as they sat at their table, a man they described as a busboy approached and began to berate them, stating that the two needed to ‘behave … this is a family restaurant.’ When Melissa Johns asked for the man’s name and his manager’s name, he reportedly became irate, screaming that ‘I’m in charge tonight, there is no manager, so get out!’
The man then allegedly challenged Johns to a fistfight outside the restaurant, at which point a female employee of the restaurant threatened to call the police to remove Mendoza and Johns while doing nothing to defuse the situation.
And last week, lesbian Kathy Betts came forward to report an alleged incident in which Betts claimed she was verbally attacked by a busboy at Cesar’s May 14, 2002, after displaying physical affection to a friend. Betts was told to ‘behave’ and never to come back to the restaurant.
Interviewed at the Clark Street restaurant on Sept. 12, owner Cesar Sanchez told Windy City Times that he was the person who spoke with Mendoza and Johns on Aug. 31. He denied he approached their table because they were lesbian; he approached them, he said, because the women were ‘drunk and horny.’ He also claimed families were in the restaurant at the time. ‘I do not discriminate,’ the senior Sanchez told Windy City Times. ‘We serve everybody, and I employ many gay people. I don’t care about any of that stuff.’ But when asked whether he would have reacted the same way to a straight couple expressing affection, Sanchez refused to answer, saying that such a discussion ‘is like talking about religion. We’d be here all day.’
In an unsigned letter faxed to Windy City Times from Cesar’s in reference to the Aug. 31 allegations, apparent representatives of the restaurant stated that they were ‘shocked’ by the events of Aug. 31. In part, the letter read: ‘Cesar’s has never discriminated against any of our valued customers because of their sexual orientation, race or gender. Being a family restaurant we are in the business to serve the public and for this reason we do not condone any type of promiscuous behavior between any of our patrons regardless of their sexual orientation. We believe in equality and respect between our patrons and employees and it is in our best interest to maintain a good relationship with a community such as the gay/lesbian (sic). Being that not only do we cater individuals of this gender (sic), many of our staff is in fact part of the same community. It is also important to mention that 80% of our customers belong to the gay/lesbian community and therefore, they support 80% of our sales. … [Our] intentions were never intended to make (Melissa Johns and Naomi Mendoza) feel uncomfortable or insulted, but unfortunately that is how the rest of our clientele felt with their inappropriate behavior. If it had been a ‘small kiss on the cheek’ or ‘putting an arm around her’ (sic) like this couple stated in the article (see Windy City Times, Sept. 10) we would not have had a problem … . The behavior that (Johns and Mendoza) showed this night went beyond our standards, perhaps because of the tolerance in consuming a little too much alcohol or liquor on their part (sic).
Therefore we had to take action of this matter immediately due to a complaint given from a table sitting near them. This table stated that this couple was behaving (disrespectfully), making them feel uncomfortable and asked us to please do something. Subsequently, we asked this couple to please behave and have a little respect for the people and families present at that time otherwise they will have to leave the premises. Totally ignoring the staff and giving bad attitude toward the staff, we were forced to take charge of the situation by asking them to please leave the establishment right away.’
The restaurant also faxed Windy City Times a separate letter written by Miguel Solorzano and Miguel Cordova, a gay male couple who reportedly witnessed the Aug. 31 incident. That letter read, in part: ‘My boyfriend and I have been patrons of Cesar’s Restaurant for the past 5 years and in those 5 years all that we have experienced are good times and great Mexican food. It is unfortunate that Ms. Mendoza and her girlfriend had a different experience but coincidentally, my boyfriend and I witnessed the entire event and Cesar’s was in their right since Ms. Mendoza and her girlfriend were acting very promiscuously in a very public place where a family with children was dining. As a member of the gay community that lives in Boystown I feel that certain behavior whether gay or straight is not acceptable in a restaurant where families and older people dine. I understand that we have human rights and we can choose our own sexual preference, however we must also have respect for ourselves and other people in a public place.’ Solorzano and Cordova did not return Windy City Times’ calls at press time,
Israel Sanchez, son of the owner and a manager at Cesar’s, contacted Windy City Times via telephone on Sept. 15 to assert the restaurant’s commitment to serving the GLBT community fairly. ‘Without the support of the gay and lesbian community, we would definitely not have two locations, and our Clark Street location would have hardly any employees.’ All alleged bias incidents have been at the Clark Street location.
Sanchez, who estimates that the staff on Clark Street is approximately 60% gay, said that the employee who reportedly harassed a lesbian couple Aug. 31 had recently been promoted to supervisor and was, according to Sanchez, ‘on a power trip.’ Sanchez told Windy City Times that the employee was reprimanded, demoted, and re-assigned to a position with very little customer contact. (However, in last week’s Windy City Times, owner Cesar Sanchez said in an interview that he was the person who talked to the couple.)
‘We prefer to handle these things within the family,’ Sanchez said. ‘A lot of times when people are drinking, they blow things out of proportion. We don’t want to make a big deal when it is not necessary. The bottom line is, we do not discriminate. Why would we do that? It doesn’t make any sense—we understand where our business is located and how supportive gays and lesbians have been of our restaurant. We know how devastating it would be to our business if we discriminated against gays and lesbians.’ He encouraged customers with complaints to contact the restaurant via its Web site at www.killermargaritas.com.
According to Sanchez, Cesar’s is a self-described ‘family-oriented’ restaurant and has a policy of not permitting overt public displays of affection between couples. ‘Holding hands would be OK, a kiss on the cheek is OK, but things like sitting on each other’s laps, that is something we would probably ask the customer to stop doing.’
Sanchez told Windy City Times that this policy has been in place at the restaurant ‘for 15 years, and this is the first time anyone has complained.’ He also says that straight couples are routinely asked to tone down their public displays of affection while dining at Cesar’s if the behavior is deemed ‘out of hand,’ in Sanchez’s words.
The determination of what constitutes an inappropriate display of affection is, Sanchez admits, a gray area at the discretion of management on duty at the time. ‘This is a restaurant, not a bar,’ Sanchez said, although he admits that Cesar’s advertises itself as the home of the ‘killer margarita’ both on its storefronts and its Web site, an unusual advertising slogan for a family-oriented restaurant. Still, Sanchez is apologetic about the reported bias: ‘Clearly (the alleged Aug. 31 bias incident) was mishandled on our part, and I apologize for employing someone who treated our customers poorly,’ Sanchez said.
But Sanchez’s words ring hollow for both victims and activists. Melissa Johns and Naomi Mendoza reacted with disbelief when told that the restaurant maintains that the women incited the Aug. 31 incident with drunk and disorderly behavior. ‘I wasn’t even drinking that night, and Naomi had half a margarita,’ said Johns. ‘We were definitely not drunk.’ And both women insist that their behavior that night was not in any way overtly sexual. ‘We were stroking each other’s cheeks. It was a tender, affectionate moment. We did not even kiss. It was not at all sexual,’ says Johns. ‘A mother and her child could have had the exact same physical contact that Naomi and I had that night.’
Johns and Mendoza also insist that they saw no families in the restaurant Aug. 31. ‘It was the usual crowd of young adults, gay people and Cubs fans,’ said Johns. ‘And there weren’t that many people in the restaurant anyway. We would have noticed kids around, and we didn’t see any.’ Indeed, the restaurant stated in its letter to Windy City Times that approximately 80% of its customers are from the gay community, thereby implying that the vast majority of Cesar’s customers are not traditional straight families with children.
Activists also point out that Israel Sanchez’s explanation of a power-hungry new manager taking advantage of his position in the Aug. 31 incident does not adequately explain the Russell/Miller incident Sept. 14; the actions of a female employee who threatened to call police on Johns and Mendoza on Aug. 31; the alleged incident on May 14, 2002 involving Kathy Betts; or owner Cesar Sanchez’s comment that he was the person who engaged with Johns and Mendoza on Aug. 31; as well as Cesar’s physical similarity to descriptions of the assailant in the other bias allegations against Cesar’s.
It is also unclear whether other neighborhood restaurants share the Sanchez family’s interpretations of public decency: this writer and her partner, Urzula Urzua, conducted a test last week in which we visited several Boys Town establishments and engaged in the same reported public displays of affection which allegedly led to incidents at Cesar’s on Clark, including kissing on the lips and stroking of arms and faces over the table, as well as additional actions slightly more provocative than those reported to have taken place at Cesar’s.
The establishments visited, including PS Bangkok on North Clark Street, Nookie’s on Halsted, Thai Classic on North Clark Street, Ihop on Broadway and Grace, and the newly renovated Dunkin’ Donuts on North Clark, did not ask us to tone down our displays of affection, even as small children milled happily with their parents at the Dunkin’ Donuts. At a nearly empty PS Bangkok on Clark Street between Roscoe and Aldine, the restaurant owner engaged us in a pleasant discussion about the economy, served us herself and welcomed us to return for subsequent visits.
According to Bill Greaves, the Mayor’s GLBT liaison, consumers with bias complaints against any business may contact the Adjudication Division of the Commission on Human Relations at (312) 744-4111 to request a hearing, but he cautions that the agency is already ‘one year behind’ and that complainants can expect long delays in the resolution of their cases. Greaves is unaware of any current complaints against Cesar’s.
Mendoza and Johns, whose Aug. 31 complaint ignited the current controversy over Cesar’s policies, want a public apology from the restaurant. ‘They were wrong, and they need to admit that. Their employee totally freaked out, screamed at us, and wanted to fight me. Regardless of whether or not we violated one of their so-called rules, that’s no way to treat a customer, and they know it. There are other, much more polite ways they could have handled the situation. We were not drunk, and we were not promiscuous. This whole thing is their responsibility,’ said Johns.
Stated Pedro C., ‘If this is how they want to treat their customers they need to get out of business. It’s appalling.’ And Steven Miller, who says that an attorney friend is keeping a ‘very close eye’ on the unfolding bias complaints against Cesar’s, said passionately: ‘Cesar says he has a family restaurant. Well, I have two dogs and a husband. That’s my idea of family … . (Cesar’s) claims that these are isolated incidents, but these stories just keep coming and coming, and none of (the victims) know each other …. (Cesar’s) claims that (victims) drink too much and misunderstand them, but how can all of us be wrong? No way.’