He gave these crass customers his two one cents.
Popular NYC influencer Darron Cardosa, aka The Bitchy Waiter, recalled the worst tip he ever received — a penny left at the bottom of a glass by a trio of ill-mannered ladies at Houlihan’s on West 49th Street and 7th Avenue.
“I reached in and I got the penny out and then I went out to 49th Street and I chased them and I found them. I said, ‘You left something at the table.’ And she said, ‘What?” And I said, ‘This!’ and I just threw that penny at her,” Cardosa, 58, told The Post.
“And then I just went back to the restaurant, and she followed me … I got written up, but I was a superstar at Houlihan’s for that.”
Darron Cardosa’s very first Bitchy Waiter blog post came after a customer asked him to turn off the TV at Vynl on the Upper East Side. “I said, ‘I can’t just turn off the TV.’ And she said, ‘Oh, we’re from California, and we don’t let our kids watch television while they eat.’” Helayne Seidman
Cardosa, a native of Victoria, Texas, who now resides in Sunnyside, Queens, moved to the Big Apple in 1993 to pursue an acting career — and took server positions in between auditioning and performing.
His first NYC restaurant gig was at Pizzeria Uno at the South Street Seaport, which, he said, was “really popular with tourists, teens and big giant rats.”
“It was right next to the Fulton Fish Market, so that place was just teeming with rats,” Cardosa dished.
“We would see one every day. A customer would see one and tell us and we would always have to act like, ‘Oh my God, this never happened.’”
It was after a run-in with an entitled patron at Vynl, the now-shuttered music-themed Upper East Side diner — where a customer once left behind a dirty diaper “folded up on the plate” — that he began blogging anonymously under the pseudonym The Bitchy Waiter.
His online rants got him fired from ABC Kitchen, owned by celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, after an employee figured out he was spilling tea about the famed Flatiron restaurant, even though he never named it.
“Somebody sent me a message through my blog and said, ‘I know who you are and you should stop defaming our restaurant.’ Then three days later, I got called down to the office and they said I just wasn’t fitting in.”
When Cardosa quit his job at Pizzeria Uno, he went to Houlihan’s. “We made a lot of money. It was blood money though, because that was right down the street from Radio City. I remember how many times tourists would come in and just be so shocked at how expensive a hamburger was there.” Courtesy of Darron Cardosa
He then launched The Bitchy Waiter pages on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok — where he posts his horror stories along with those sent to him by servers across the country and tips on how to behave at restaurants.
One of the pieces of advice he offers is to stop the PDA at the table.
“This one couple, she had a steak and wanted it rare. And they were making out as they were eating. I just remember thinking, ‘That’s the most disgusting thing, you probably have rare chunks of steak in between your teeth,’” said Cardosa, who revealed his identity when he wrote his memoir, “The Bitchy Waiter” and created a one-man show around his eatery escapades.
Katy Perry, who Cardosa served at ABC Kitchen, was “really, really nice,” he said. MICHAEL TRAN/AFP via Getty Images; Helayne Seidman
It was at ABC Kitchen where he served his most famous customer — Katy Perry, who asked if she could swap fries for mashed potatoes.
“I asked my manager and she went, ‘Mashed potatoes are only for dinner.’ I said, ‘OK, because Katy Perry’s table was asking.’ She went, ‘The next time you have this question, you should say, ‘Katy Perry wants mashed potatoes.’ I’m like, ‘Ok, but do we have them?’ She went, ‘No.’”
“Then she made this big deal and went to ask the kitchen and came back and said, ‘We can’t. Tell her we’re so sorry.’ So I went up to Katy and said, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t have mashed potatoes,’ and she said, ‘That’s totally fine!’”
Cardosa stars in “We’re So Dead,” which was released digitally on Friday. Blake Studwell
Now, Cardosa is starring in the movie “We’re So Dead,” crowdfunded mainly by his fans, who donated $150,000 to the film.
It was written by his friend Ken MacLaughlin, who has 15 years of experience waiting tables, and was released digitally on Friday.
The comedy-horror, whose cast has also worked in the industry, is set at a restaurant on a quiet Christmas Eve, until a Karen customer comes in and starts killing the staff — hence the title’s double entendre, Cardosa explained.
“That’s why it’s called ‘We’re So Dead,’” he said, “because it’s very slow and we’re literally dead by the end of the movie.”