Vegan Flips Out: Why Did Police Threaten To Arrest Jack Litsky?

A vegan man dining out with his wife at a New Jersey restaurant became embroiled in a dispute with the restaurant's management after being presented with a bill he said was unusually high. Jack and Toby Litsky, who last year decided to convert to a vegan diet to combat high cholesterol, went out to Monticello at Red Bank restaurant in Red Bank, N.J., with a box of wholegrain vegan pasta brought from home and were charged twice as much as they expected to pay.

Sometimes, according to Jack Litsky, restaurants will advertise wholegrain pasta on their menu but use a type which isn't vegan-friendly, so he and his wife have made a habit out of bringing their own pasta when they go out to dinner. Usually, they would get a discount in return. NJ.com has, in a column about the incident, a photo of Litsky posing with a box of ShopRite whole wheat pasta -- presumably the kind he and Toby Litsky typically consume.

The first time the couple ate out at Monticello a year ago, he called before coming and informed the restaurant of he and his wife's dietary needs. That time, they were charged $12 each. On the following occasion on Feb. 23, the Litskys came with four other visitors. When the bill came, they saw they'd each been charged $24, the upper end of what pasta items on the menu went for. He asked for the manager. The manager was also the cook, and couldn't leave the kitchen. So Litsky asked for the owner, Caterin Giambalzo, who maintained that as Litsky had come on a Saturday night and ordered a custom meal, she had to charge him extra despite what he might've paid before. The police were called. When they arrived and Litsky continued to protest the bill, they told him that if he didn't pay it, they would arrest him for "theft of services."

Litsky also had a coupon worth $50, which Giambalzo refused to honor. Reached for comment, Giambalzo said it wasn't applicable to customized dishes. Litsky paid the bill but contacted American Express the following day to dispute the $12 difference. The restaurant eventually agreed to reimburse Litsky for it.

NJ.com also has an image of the card of instructions regarding meal preparation which the Litskys gave the waitress. It includes requests for "extra extra red tomato sauce," "extra extra extra mushrooms" and "extra extra extra onions."