And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week

CMU Beef Of The Week #151: Busta Rhymes v Cheeseburger Baby

By | Published on Friday 5 April 2013

Busta Rhymes

Fast food may have contributed to people generally being overweight and unhealthy, but there’s one thing you can’t fault it on – it’s fast. Honestly, you turn up, you tell the person in the hat what you want and then a couple of minutes later a hot, almost entirely flavourless meal is handed to you in a bag. Sometimes you don’t even have to get out of your car. Amazing.

The problem is, in these times of being able to have everything you want RIGHT NOW, we’ve become impatient. If it takes ten minutes to get your food, rather than two, suddenly you feel you have been failed by the entire food industry. Do they not know you’re hungry? What is their problem? Why are they serving all those people in front of you who are clearly just popping in for an unscheduled snack, rather than handing over life-saving sustenance to you?

These are the thoughts, apparently, that went through the mind of rapper Busta Rhymes earlier this week when he visited Cheeseburger Baby in Miami to find a queue of people ten deep waiting to eat. But luckily for him, he’s a celebrity, and if there’s one thing everyone knows, celebrities don’t have to queue. Or do they?

According to the Miami New Times, Busta arrived at the restaurant at 5.45am on Wednesday – apparently a peak time – and upon seeing the queue in front of him, denying him the breakfast he clearly deserved, marched straight up to the counter and demanded food.

Cheeseburger Baby owner Stephanie Vitori explained: “We have had everyone from Jay-Z to [US celebrity chef] Anthony Bourdain eat at Cheeseburger Baby. Never have we had a problem with a celebrity. [But Busta] got very upset when we wouldn’t take his order first when he was the last one to come in. We treat everyone as equals here at CBB. You can’t skip the line of ten people waiting in front of you”.

After Vitori explained this to Busta, and he had returned to the back of the queue and waited to place his order, he stomped off to his car to wait for it to be prepared. There his burger was delivered to him and all was well again. Except it wasn’t.

“He came back in the restaurant and started becoming outwardly angry”, says Vitori. “He was calling our delivery driver Santiago a ‘fag’ multiple times, and me a ‘bitch’, and [telling] me ‘to shut the fuck up’ because we put his salt, pepper, ketchup, and mayo – that he asked for – on the side. On the side is just how we do it. We don’t want your burger getting soggy!”

That sounds reasonable. I like to be the master of my own condiments. But apparently this level of control is too much for Busta, and he got so worked up that Vitori was forced to call the police. At this point he left and all was well again. Except it wasn’t.

The coda to the story came a few minutes later, explains Vitori: “He called us to let us know there was no cheese on his burger, which was untrue, and that he was going to ‘come get us’. I deal with drunk and disorderly people all the time. I have been doing this for eleven years, but never in my life have I felt more disrespected as a business owner or a woman”.

Come on Busta, after eleven years a place called Cheeseburger Baby isn’t going to forget a thing like cheese. They’re more likely to forget to put your condiments on the side.



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