A from-scratch cake is one of the best ways to mark a birthday, especially after a luxurious steakhouse dinner. A towering fifteen-layer cake is presented to one guest only to show up later as a tiny thin sliver on the serving plate, and then end up having no leftovers of the cake return. This is exactly what happened to a group that went to a steakhouse in New York City.
When your friend is a private chef and baker, then you know you’re in for a treat. Ryan Nordheimer is known on social media for his cakes, posting process videos of complex and towering cakes. One of these baked creations, a complex fifteen-layer funfetti cake, Nordheimer made for a friend’s birthday.
Bringing it to a high-end New York City steakhouse, Nordheimer asked if he could cut the cake for his friend, to which the restaurant declined saying it was a safety hazard. While disappointed, many places have a cake-cutting fee to offset people bringing in outside desserts. Yet when the cake slices were brought out from the back, the portions were indescribably thin. Nordheimer said the slices of cake couldn’t have been more than a millimeter in thickness. With a total of twelve guests and thin slices, when his friend asked the waiter for the remaining cake to take home, the waiter said there was none left.
Nordheimer took to social media to share his experience. What made him upset was the fact that the cake was a gift to his friend and his friend couldn’t experience more of the cake except for the measly portion he was given during the meal. He had a similar experience last year at a different restaurant, but there were only two-ish slices missing. In the case of this restaurant, over half of the cake was missing.
People were quick to find out that the restaurant was a high-end midtown restaurant Quality Meats NYC and blasted their Instagram page and online reviews. Online pressure led to the management calling Nordheimer on three separate occasions. In an updated video, Nordheimer said the management watched the security footage and said the cake was forgotten.
People in the comments section were quick to point out that the waiter said that there was none left. Several people who worked as servers didn’t buy this excuse. “I was a server and a customer came in with custom-made cookies,” said TikTok user Scarlet Adare. “She took the time to make characters for each of her family. I plated them for her and my coworkers ate them. I was so angry and embarrassed. Servers just eat stuff, they don’t ask. They just eat anything in front of them.” People were also shocked that the restaurant was surprised that they wanted to take the leftovers home. Another user, Low Key Loki said “I used to work at a restaurant and people would leave behind cakes all of the time and said we could finish it, but we would never assume until they told us or left.
Nordheimer said that the restaurant compensated with a free dinner for two, but many still think it’s not enough. A lot of people said the compensation was uneven, especially since it was a party of twelve and the cake’s cost was in the hundreds with all of the labor and ingredient costs. The silver lining, Nordheimer stated, regardless of the compensation being fair, is that his friend found all of the cake drama and backlash entertaining and felt like that was a gift in or of itself.
Since then he’s made another cake for another friend’s birthday and in the video he states “we thought bringing it to a restaurant was a bad idea” as a nod to the previous cake fiasco. Luckily at home the slices were thicker and there were plenty of leftovers.