A confrontation last weekend between the owner of downtown ramen shop Table to Stix and a customer over tipping has gone viral on social media, with CBS News Chicago even covering the incident on Thursday.
On Saturday, April 19, a customer at the restaurant paid for a $19.89 tab with a $20 bill, which kicked off a dispute. Kenny Chou, who owns Table to Stix, followed that customer out of the shop and down Davis Street.
That’s when someone started recording the confrontation, and the two proceed to exchange words. In the video, which has since been removed from a Reddit thread by the site’s content moderators, Chou demands that the young man tip or not come back. The customer tells Chou that he paid what he owed, and that a tip was optional.
As the recording continues, Chou grows angrier as the customer tells him to back off. “What are you going to do?” the young man asks repeatedly, then saying that the video will “blow up on social media.”
The RoundTable couldn’t reach the customer, who later filed a police report for harassment, according to the Evanston Police Department and Councilmember Devon Reid, who mentioned the incident at his ward meeting Thursday night. An EPD spokesperson said Friday that officers are currently following up to investigate the matter.
In Chou’s telling, before the confrontation shown in the video took place, he asked the customer why he hadn’t tipped, and that the customer suggested that if the restaurant was struggling to make ends meet, Chou should raise prices. Chou said he then asked what a reasonable price point would be for the order, to which the customer suggested $25. He then asked if he could charge that amount instead, which is when the customer left.
Chou admitted that he snapped out of frustration. He said this particular customer had tried his patience during previous visits, and that the baseline stress level for most restaurant workers and owners is high, especially of late with the Trump administration’s tariff plans.
Still, he made no excuses for losing his cool.
Regardless, the video went semi-viral on multiple Reddit forums. In the comments, people took both sides, with many accusing Chou of racially-motivated harassment of the customer, who is Black. Others said Chou’s frustration was justified over the lack of a tip, and that restaurant workers rely on tips for their wages.
On Monday, messages appeared in chalk on sidewalks around downtown Evanston, including one in front of Table to Stix that said “Anti-Black, Do Not Eat Here.”
A group of Black community leaders and local activists announced Friday that they’re holding a press conference and boycott outside the restaurant from 3 to 5 p.m. Saturday to protest “a confrontation that community members have condemned as racially motivated, dangerous, and unacceptable,” legislative advocate Meleika Gardner said in a Friday newsletter.
“This boycott is about real consequences and real healing — not branding exercises, not performative gestures,” Gardner wrote. “The community is asking for an act of courage: that Kenny Chou reach out to the young man and ask what repair looks like to him. And if he is sincere, to offer a public apology to the Black community in person, not just through media outlets.”
City commission joins the discussion
The incident also entered the realm of official city business on Thursday, when a vaguely worded item — “Community concerns regarding an incident at a local business” — appeared on the Equity and Empowerment Commission’s meeting agenda.
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