Cake-gate: Private chef accuses high-end NYC steakhouse staff of eating his birthday cake

Don’t let them eat cake!A private chef accused the staff at a Midtown steakhouse of hogging half of the cake he had baked and brought to his friend’s birthday dinner this week – a sweet betrayal the restaurant blasted as “completely false.” In a now-viral TikTok posted Thursday, Ryan Nordheimer, 25, claimed the staff at Quality Meats only served the dinner party’s 12 guests a “tiny” slice of the “massive” 15-layer Funfetti cake he’d spent six hours baking for the occasion. “At the end of the dinner, when we had asked our waiter where the cake leftovers were, we’re expecting them to bring out the remaining half of the cake – but instead, they just say that there’s no cake left,” Nordheimer said in the video viewed nearly 6 million times. The cook, who lives in the East Village, had requested to personally slice the cake – which he claimed was worth “hundreds of dollars” — but the restaurant declined, calling it a “safety hazard,” he explained in the three-minute clip. “So the only explanation is that this high-end, New York City Midtown steakhouse took the cake back into the kitchen, cut all of us meager slices of cake to eat, and they had just eaten the rest of it themselves,” Nordheimer continued.The cake carnage quickly drew outrage.“As a former fine dining server we would be fired if we did this,” one TikToker wrote. “This is INSANE and you should confront the restaurant,” another spewed. A representative for Quality Meats, however, insisted there were only two slices of cake left – “not half the cake” as Nordheimer claimed – and that staff had not treated themselves to the dessert. “While we acknowledge that we failed to pack up the remaining two slices, the accusations that the staff ate the cake are completely false,” the rep said.The restaurant did eat humble pie, reaching out to Nordheimer to apologize and offer him a complimentary dinner.Nordheimer, for his part, changed his tune in ...