Former San Mateo's Wursthall Owner Discusses MAGA Comment: Report

SAN MATEO, CA — A former San Mateo restaurant owner apologized for a years-old tweet in which he said he wouldn’t serve people wearing “Make America Great Again” hats.

J. Kenji López-Alt, a well-known American chef who founded the beer hall style restaurant Wursthall in 2017, said in a New Yorker profile last week his since-deleted tweet put his staff’s livelihood in danger.

In 2019, López-Alt tweeted: “It hasn’t happened yet, but if you come to my restaurant wearing a MAGA cap, you aren’t getting served, same as if you come in wearing a swastika, white hood, or any other symbol of intolerance and hate.”

He also added: “MAGA hats are like white hoods except stupider because you can see exactly who is wearing them.”

The tweets were deleted and López-Alt is no longer running Wursthall for unrelated reasons, according to The New Yorker. López-Alt is also no longer active on Twitter.

But López-Alt said in the story that he “discounted the feelings of every employee there, every staff member, every other customer there.” He said people came to the restaurant and threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement on their employees.

“All this real-world backlash to some dumb two-hundred-and-fifty-character message I wrote that was probably inspired by something dumb Trump had said that day,” López-Alt said.

Click here to read López-Alt's full interview in The New Yorker.