An Influencer Reveals Why She Was Turned Away from a Paris Restaurant

In a video posted on her Instagram account, Yacine, also known as Nkya Mami, recounts her ordeal, claiming to have been the victim of discrimination by a Paris restaurant because her first name was deemed “African.” The establishment canceled the influencer’s reservation for that reason, while accepting that of her friend, whose first name was “a little more French.” “If you have an African first name, you will eat downstairs, whereas people with a French first name will eat upstairs in the restaurant,” she says indignantly in her video, which has already received more than 800,000 views.

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A few days ago, Yacine booked a table on the website of this Paris restaurant to celebrate her birthday with her friends. The next day, the establishment called her back to inform her that there was no longer any availability because of high demand. Yet the influencer, who has more than 227,000 Instagram followers, noted that booking was still possible on the establishment’s website and drew her contact’s attention to this. “She put me on hold for about seven minutes. That made me even more suspicious. To go and ask, perhaps management, check, find excuses to once again deny me access,” she told Konbini.

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To confirm her suspicions, Yacine asked a friend whose first name was “a little more French” to book a table at this restaurant. She “called me the next day, I picked up, and what did she tell me? Her reservation had been accepted,” recounts the influencer, who shared excerpts from the establishment’s responses in the rest of her video. She contacted the restaurant to complain, accusing her contact of “first-name discrimination” and racism. “It was really said in the heat of the moment. Because once again, it doesn’t convey the message I want all the way through. I should have kept my cool because people will use this as an excuse to discredit the rest,” she laments.

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Contacted by Le Parisien, the young woman said she had not filed a complaint, “aware of the legal weakness” of her case. “The evidence I have is sufficiently compelling for reporting on social media, but I doubt it would be considered admissible or sufficiently solid in court. I don’t want to enter into a legal battle that, in my opinion, will lead nowhere—or that could even backfire on me through legal costs, or worse, damages to be paid, which would be the height of irony,” she explains. Yacine’s case is not isolated in Paris, according to Jean-François Amadieu, a professor at Université Panthéon Sorbonne Paris 1, who notes “a desire among owners to try to filter their clientele.” “In their concept, they want people of one type or another; it is clearly discriminatory.”

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