James Corden Was Briefly Banned From an NYC Restaurant for Yelling at Waitstaff

It doesn't reflect great on him, TBH.

James Corden
(Image credit: Getty Images)

James Corden got himself into trouble this week, when a top NYC restaurateur accused him of being "abusive" towards waitstaff at celeb hotspot Balthazar.

Keith McNally took to Instagram to air his grievances against The Late Late Show host, and, my goodness, he did not hold back.

"James Corden is a Hugely gifted comedian, but a tiny Cretin of a man. And the most abusive customer to my Balthazar servers since the restaurant opened 25 years ago," McNally wrote.

"I don't often 86 a customer, to today I 86'd Corden. It did not make me laugh."

The restaurateur then proceeded to describe two separate scenes—one from June and one from October—when Corden allegedly behaved poorly at Balthazar.

The first involved the TV star finding a hair in something he was served, and being "extremely nasty," demanding a new round of drinks and threatening to leave "nasty reviews" on Yelp.

The second incident saw Corden reportedly yell at a server, because there was a tiny bit of egg white in his wife's egg yolk omelette. After a new dish was brought to the table and wasn't to the celeb's specifications, "That's when James Corden began yelling like crazy to the server: 'You can't do your job! You can't do your job! Maybe I should go into the kitchen and cook the omelette myself!'" according to McNally.

The restaurateur followed up with a second post in which he shared that Corden had called him to apologize, although commenters were quick to point out that he seemed to have called once the story had gotten out to various media outlets, and apparently hadn't apologized to the servers directly.

It's not the first time Corden has come under fire for reportedly behaving badly in public. Editor Sam Stryker shared a few such reports on Twitter, and although of course some are hard to confirm when they come from regular social media users, they overall don't really make the presenter look great. Let's see how he responds to the controversy from now on.

Iris Goldsztajn
Morning Editor

Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of British Vogue, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29 and SELF. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.