Luxury Restaurant Hit with Fine for Providing Women and Men Different Menus
An exclusive restaurant in Lima, Peru, has been fined over $60,000 for its practice of giving men and women different menus.
La Rosa Nautica, a popular gourmet restaurant overlooking the Pacific Ocean, provides women with a gold menu without prices while giving men a blue one with the cost details.
The Associated Press reported that La Rosa Nautica defended the tradition during legal proceedings.
The restaurant’s owners argued that their menus without prices “extoll the position of women, considering it a pleasure for them to enjoy a romantic evening with their partner, without taking into account the cost of the services.”
The National Institute for the Defense of Free Competition and the Protection of Intellectual Property did not see it that way, according to Fox News.
The agency determined in a 3-2 ruling that women should have “access to the same list of dishes with prices included.”
La Rosa Nautica was hit with a $62,000 fine and directed to start giving both men and women menus with the prices on them.
That old world 'ladies' menu' at the famed La Rosa Nautica in Lima will become a thing of the past after a tribunal ruled it amounts to gender discrimination: https://t.co/8gg5nuX6Zs pic.twitter.com/Ls8bQwi2CZ
— Christine Armario (@cearmario) October 21, 2019
Additionally, the agency is requiring the restaurant to post a sign “clearly stating that discrimination will not be tolerated,” according to the AP.
“These small things may seem harmless,” agency official Liliana Cerrón said on Monday. “But at the end of the day they are the basis of a chauvinistic construct reinforcing differences between men and women.”
Back in the early 1980s, the famed L’Orangerie restaurant in Los Angeles was sued for the same reason La Rosa Nautica ran into legal trouble.
Time Magazine reported in 1980 that when a woman wanted to treat her male business partner to dinner at the exclusive restaurant, she ran into some trouble.
Her menu had no prices on it and when she learned why, the couple decided to leave without eating.
They then filed a lawsuit, citing California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act.
They asked for damages and a permanent injunction against the practice.
According to Eater Los Angeles, all ended well with the restaurant agreeing to put away its different male and female menus.
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