Bizarre Silk City Incident Takes Bad Service to a Whole New Level

Left: Kumbah Sarnor, who had a terrible experience at Silk City Diner on Tuesday night. Right: One of her daughter’s soiled stuffed animals.

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Tuesday started out as an average enough day for Northeast Philadelphia resident Kumbah Sarnor. She did some administrative work for her event planning business. She picked her five-year-old daughter up from school. The two went to Silk City Diner for dinner, as they’ve done many times before. But that’s when everything changed.

Sarnor and her daughter mostly enjoyed their meal — Sarnor had shrimp fried rice with teriyaki sauce, one of her Silk City faves, and her daughter scarfed down grilled cheese and tomato soup — though they found service to be a bit slow.

“The service is never wonderful,” Sarnor told Philly Mag on Thursday afternoon. Still, it’s a frequent stop for her and her daughter. “I frequented it before she was born, after she was born. We do brunch. We go there after church on Sundays. We’re always there. And we don’t even live in the neighborhood, so we travel to go there.”

Well, service quickly went from not wonderful to bizarrely and almost inexplicably terrible.

Near the end of their dinner, but still with some food and lemonade to finish, Sarnor’s daughter announced that she needed to go to the bathroom, which was quite close to the booth in which they were seated. Sarnor accompanied her to the bathroom, and they left her daughter’s three stuffed animals and Sarnor’s coat, wallet, and keys in the booth. Sarnor thought nothing of leaving their belongings there.

After her daughter was done in the bathroom — Sarnor says they were gone no more than a few minutes, and had yet to close out their check — they returned to the booth to find that it had been bussed. That was annoying, Sarnor says, since they still had some food on their plates and her daughter really wanted to finish her lemonade. But then Sarnor realized that their stuff was gone. Her coat. Her keys. Her wallet. Those stuffed animals. Naturally, she was confused and asked an employee behind the counter bar where her things were. Had they, for some reason, been moved to lost and found, even though they were only gone for mere minutes?

“He kinda gave me a funny, confused look,” says Sarnor of the employee. “And he’s like, ‘Oh, they may have been thrown out.’ I was like, ‘May have?’ I’m almost laughing, because there’s no way you threw my stuff in the trash can. I haven’t even left the building. I haven’t paid my bill. It makes absolutely no sense. And then he’s like, ‘Actually, I threw them out.’ And then he proceeds to dig into the trash can. He starts pulling things out, filled with trash, with teriyaki sauce. I’m in utter shock.”

Who wouldn’t be? This situation couldn’t get any worse, right? Wrong.

“Other diners were coming up to me saying not only did he trash your stuff, immediately once you and your daughter got up, he went straight to the table, he took her stuffed animals, wiped the table down with them, and then he proceeded to take everything and put it in the trash,” Sarnor says.

Wait, what? “He wiped the table down with the stuffed animals?” I asked Sarnor, bewildered. “With the stuffed animals!” she replied.

Sarnor asked to see a manager. An employee told her that the owner, Mark Bee, was standing on the other side of the room, and someone walked up to explain what was happening. According to Sarnor, Bee walked into the kitchen and didn’t return. Eventually, someone who said they were a manager came out and… “It wasn’t even an apology,” Sarnor explains. “He just seemed annoyed with the employee for him even have to deal with this. I was emotional, like tears were forming in my eyes. I told him I just needed a bag to put my soiled things in and that I wanted to leave.”

As Sarnor tells it, a back-and-forth ensued, and the employee started using profanities. “I’m not doing this in front of my daughter,” she told him. “So I no longer wanna speak with you.”

She gathered her teriyaki sauce-covered belongings and walked out. The restaurant comped her meal.

Soon thereafter, Sarnor took to social media to tell her side of the story and said she’d never go to Silk City Diner again and encouraged others to boycott the restaurant. Her video soon went viral; comments and DMs poured in.

“So many people have replied saying this is normal for them,” says Sarnor. “They racially profile me. They watch me as I go to the restroom. It’s the norm. They’re not surprised. People say they have experienced discrimination and bad customer service. They don’t care about people.”

I asked Sarnor if she could imagine any explanation at all for the employee’s baffling behavior.

“It’s bizarre,” she says. “Why would you do that? I don’t know what the motivation was. I hate to think is it because we were women? People of color. It’s outrageous and uncalled for. It’s beyond me. And to a child, at that!”

The day after the incident, the following message appeared on Silk City’s Instagram page:

We are aware of the situation that occurred last night between a member of our staff and a customer. We want you to know that we are taking this seriously. What happened is unacceptable and does not reflect the values, standards, or community that Silk City stands for. We sincerely apologize to anyone who has been hurt, disappointed, or affected by this situation.

Following our review of the incident, the employee involved is no longer employed by Silk City. We take our responsibility to our guests seriously, and the conduct shown in this incident falls short of the standards we expect from anyone representing our business.

We want to make things right. We understand why emotions are high. We are not asking anyone to dismiss their feelings. We are asking for the chance to handle this responsibly and with care.

Silk City has always been about bringing people together through music, food, and community. We know that words alone are not enough. We understand that rebuilding trust takes accountability and action.

We are truly sorry, and we appreciate the opportunity to address this and move forward in the right way.

Sarnor was unimpressed.

“They turned off their comments,” she noted. “The ‘apology’ was not directed to me, did not mention my daughter. It seemed insincere. It was for the community. It was for PR.”

Later on Wednesday, Sarnor received an email from Joe “Joppy” Ferrone, the general manager of Silk City Diner. (Neither Ferrone nor Bee returned multiple calls and messages seeking comment for this story.) In the lengthy email, Ferrone wrote, “I have been with this company for many years, and I have never had an employee do something as strange as what [the employee] did.” He apologized and confirmed that the employee had been fired after an investigation. Sarnor didn’t respond, but she says she’s concerned more with the overall environment and management than this one employee.

“What are the corrective actions?” she wonders. “Will there be any training done?”

Regardless, Sarnor insists that she will never step foot through the door of Silk City again.

“And I will continue to tell my story so that no one goes back,” she promises.