Paris Hotel Staffer Drops Bomb on Serena Williams, Says She Was ‘Unrecognizable’ Before Rejecting Her

Days after Serena Williams blew her top on social media because a Paris hotel refused to recognize her importance by giving her a restaurant table on demand, a worker at the hotel said the staff she dealt with did not even recognize her at all.

“Yikes @peninsulaparis I’ve been denied access to rooftop to eat in a empty restaurant of nicer places but never with my kids. Always a first,” Williams posted on X on Monday.

To many the word “denied” could bring up unpleasant associations with pre-civil rights days in America when people could be “denied service” due to their race or ethnicity.

A report from Page Six said that staffers said Williams was “unrecognizable.”

“When she came, there were only two tables available, and they had been reserved by clients of the hotel,” employee Maxine Mannevy said.

Mannevy said she was not working at the time the tempest began to brew.

“My colleague didn’t recognize her and feels terrible, but he told her what he would have told any other client, which is to wait downstairs in the bar for a table to become available. That was absolutely nothing personal,” Mannevy said.

Mannevy said Williams arrived at the hotel with another woman and a stroller.

Using your fame to trash a restaurant because they did not bend to your entitled demands is being the worst type of person. I thought you were better than this???

— BC201 (@BC0201) August 5, 2024

A report in The Washington Post noted that high-end restaurants, such as the one that became the target of Williams’s ire, do not often have walk-in tables available.

Meg Zimbeck, founder of a tour service called Paris by Mouth, said tables in Paris are often reserved for longer periods of time than in American restaurants, which are also often larger than their Paris counterparts.

“All of that really compresses the number of seats that are available. So you might walk into a restaurant, especially if it’s earlier than most people eat here, and see lots of tables that might be reserved for later,” she said.

The restaurant was profuse in its apologies, but noted that the tennis star could not grab what others already had booked.

“In response to Ms. Williams’ tweet, for whom we have the utmost admiration and respect, as we do for all our esteemed guests, we reiterate our deepest apologies that we were not able to offer her a table at our rooftop bar when she arrived with her family and without a reservation,” the hotel said in a statement, according to the New York Post.

“We do always try to make space for walk-in guests, but sometimes this is not possible,” the hotel said.

What’s your goal in posting this?

Outrage from strangers? Hard working servers lose their jobs?

All because you couldn’t sit at a table at a fully reserved restaurant. To think they should experience negatives bc you didn’t get what you want and have a following.

— paige s. (@PaigeSully88) August 5, 2024

“On August 5th, our rooftop bar was indeed fully booked, and the only unoccupied tables at that time belonged to our gourmet restaurant, L’Oiseau Blanc, which was also fully reserved,” the statement continued.

“As an alternative, Ms. Williams was offered an outside table downstairs at the hotel’s La Terrasse Kléber,” the statement said.