Professional Baker Claims Restaurant Staff Ate Half Of The 15-Layer Funfetti Cake Worth ‘Hundreds Of Dollars’ He Made For His Friend’s Birthday
If they did eat the cake, we can't blame them! It looked delicious.
Studio Romantic | Shutterstock When a man and his friends went to a New York City restaurant to celebrate one of their birthdays, they expected to be the only ones enjoying the delicious cake they brought along.
However, the restaurant staff had other ideas. The leftovers from the professionally baked cake, worth hundreds of dollars, mysteriously disappeared, leaving the baker pointing the finger at restaurant employees.
The professional baker and dinner guest brought the cake to the restaurant as a gift for his friend's birthday, but the kitchen staff reportedly ate half of it.
Ryan Nordheimer, a baker in New York City, often prepares extravagant cakes for his friends’ birthdays. He recently spent half a day preparing a friend a Funfetti birthday cake decorated with rainbow sprinkles, rainbow cookies, graham crackers, and buttercream frosting — a dessert he valued at several hundred dollars.
Later that evening, Nordheimer and his friends went out to a restaurant to celebrate, and he gave the cake to the servers to put in the fridge and save for dessert later.
“I actually had called the restaurant ahead of time to ask if I could do the cake cutting instead of them, but they said that was a safety hazard,” Nordheimer explained. “So they ended up taking the cake back into the kitchen to serve it.”
However, when the cake was served, Nordheimer and his friends could not help but notice just how thin the slices were.
“We're looking at a few millimeters of thickness. Just doing some rough estimation,” he shared. “There were 12 of us at the dinner, if we're each served a slice about this size, or maybe it's a little bigger, that's gonna be about half that of that massive cake.”
Assuming that the restaurant staff only cut up half the cake, Nordheimer asked them if they could wrap up the leftovers so the birthday friend could bring them home — after all, the cake was his birthday present.
The waiter told the baker that they served the entire cake.
Nordheimer struggled to believe the restaurant's claim, insisting the cake in question was "massive" — "at least twice the size of my head" — and the thin slices they were served definitely did not make up the entire dessert. He then shared his theory for what actually happened to the cake.
“The only explanation is that this high-end New York City Midtown Steakhouse took the cake back into the kitchen, cut all of us meager slices of cake to eat, and they had just eaten the rest of it for themselves,” he said.
Still, he can’t blame them! It was a delicious cake after all. But that doesn’t mean their actions were acceptable.
“It's a long shift. They deserve maybe a little bit of a sweet treat at the end of their night," Nordheimer continued. "But when the cake is my hard work and my friend's birthday present that I gifted him, it's definitely a little disappointing."
To add insult to injury, this isn't the first time such a thing happened to the baker. On his friend’s birthday the previous year, the restaurant staff also helped themselves to a few slices of cake before serving the guests.
Many online urged the man to contact the restaurant’s manager for compensation and file a complaint against the servers who helped themselves to half of it. Thankfully, the restaurant responded appropriately.
The baker received several phone calls from restaurant management about the missing cake.
“They looked into the security footage within the kitchen, and they did confirm that a portion of the cake they neglected to give back to my friends and me as our rightful cake leftovers [were] most likely forgotten about and that it was left in the kitchen,” he shared in a follow-up video.
“They were super kind, and they offered a free dinner for two back at their restaurant to make up for this whole situation,” he added.
While he was disappointed that his friend didn’t get to bring home the leftovers, Nordheimer acknowledged that it was a busy Saturday night at the restaurant and that mistakes happen.
“There's plenty of people at that restaurant just trying to make a living like all of us. And they've admitted it was a mistake,” he said. “And I think we all make mistakes, so I can live with that.”
Restaurant servers have endless responsibilities to take care of per shift, and they are bound to experience a few hiccups here and there, whether it be accidentally spilling a drink, bringing them the wrong order, or even misplacing half of a birthday cake. It is important to note that everyone is human, and their mistakes are not intended to harm us.
Thankfully, Nordheimer said that his friend whose birthday it was has gotten a kick out of how popular the story has become — “So maybe the birthday present was the fun we had along the way!"
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.