Noches De Columbia - Hackensack, NJ
382 Main Street
Hackensack, NJ 07601
Easter Sunday, April 17, 2022 - 12:17 PM
A bright and beautiful 51 degree weather day when my daughter Brandy and I decided to try this restaurant for lunch. From the beginning we should have known better. The lack of customer service was missing when we entered. Upon being seated, our waitress approached us pad in hand and asked us "what did we want" not friendly at all. Never saying her name so I ask her and she said with a quick blink of the eye smile "Julie". We inquired about the 2 sides a couple of times because she was speaking so fast we couldn't understand her. We ask, "Does the grill chicken come with two sides, are rice and beans counted as 2 sides or 1?" She finally said yes, it's counted as 2. Then she ask did we want anything to drink which we ordered and she left. Here's where it goes downhill.
After about 4-5 minutes she brings us our drinks (Pina colada & a Pepsi), drops the drinks on the tale and leaves, never asking if we were ready to order. In the meantime, two Latino women are seated in from of us. Less than a few minutes, a young man dress in Noches uniform approaches their table and ask them if everything is alright and did they place their order, then he skips our table, goes to the table that is behind us to the left and ask he exact same thing. He ask the same thing at every table but ours, never stopping.
Hold on, it gets worst. Julie returns and goes to the table were the 2 ladies where sitting and ask them if they were ready to order, they respond yes and she starts writing it down. She never comes to our table so we decide to leave because we got the message.
Upon leaving our table, I said to Julie "we were here first and you took their order before us?" She rolls her eyes and says something to them in Spanish and they turn around to look at us and they all shake their heads and started speaking amongst themselves while still looking at us. We walked out.
Oh did I not mention that my daughter and I are African Americans? I have experienced racism & prejudice in my life but never at this magnitude in quite a long time. It was blatant discrimination. But the fact that these servers where openly willing to varying their quality of service based on customers' race, says that they probably give African-Americans inferior service which shows that race continues to be an issue in our society. Tableside racism is yet another example in which as African Americans are stereotyped and subsequently treated poorly in everyday situation. Race continues to be a significant barrier to equal treatment in restaurants as well as in other areas of social life. But this behavior should not be accepted.
After leaving we went to another Noches De Columbia restaurant because we did hear that Noches food was very good. We went with the idea of leaving behind our feelings from the previous encounter and to judge the one in South Hackensack on its own merit. Totally different, wonderful experience. I will write about them separately because they do not deserve to even be mention on this page. I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone.
"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced". James Baldwin read more