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A New Jersey singer-songwriter was left outraged when an upscale restaurant served her birthday dessert with an offensive message highlighting her wheelchair.
Antonia Sinbaldi was celebrating her 29th birthday dinner with friends and family at Blu on the Hudson in Weehawken, NJ, in June when she ordered an Apple Tart Tatin for dessert.
“Happy Wheel Chair Birthday,” the message, written in sauce, read on the plate.
Sinbaldi had posted a video from the outing with loved ones while she received the sweet treat, described as a puff pastry with vanilla ice cream and salted caramel — and the cruel note.
“Not to complain about a fairly new restaurant in my town, but why would you make my dessert say this? she questioned on Instagram. “What was written on my plate probably set my employee off more than me. I would never expect that in my town.”
Sinbaldi has used a motorized wheelchair and has needed a ventilator after she suffered a cervical spinal injury when a drunk driver struck the car she was in at the age of 2.
She was baffled by the message, and her body reacted faster than her brain.
“Body started shaking, body started spasming. My body reacted faster than my mouth or my mind,” she told WNBC on Tuesday.
After the initial shock, Sinbaldi’s party confronted the management of the Weehawken establishment — which opened in 2023 — and questioned the message.
The party was offered complimentary drinks, she claimed.
“It offended me. This whole thing doesn’t sound real,” Sinbaldi told the outlet.
The restaurant said the message was a misunderstanding between staffers after the order was placed, indicating the birthday dessert was for Sinbaldi, the diner with the wheelchair.
“We sincerely apologize to the guest and to everyone who was hurt or offended by this incident which took place on June 20, 2026. Treating every guest with dignity, respect, and care is fundamental to who we are as a company,” the restaurant said in a statement to WCBS.
“Our standard operating procedure is to use table and seat numbers on tickets to identify where each dish should be delivered. In this instance, the word ‘wheelchair’ was used as a reference to identify where a birthday dessert with a candle should be delivered,” the management said. “Unfortunately, that notation was misunderstood and was written on the plate itself. There was absolutely no malicious or disrespectful intent behind the notation. However, we fully understand how seeing that word written on a plate could be deeply hurtful and upsetting.”
Sinbaldi didn’t fully agree with the restaurant’s sentiment, calling it a “bs response.”
“My chair is not my identity, Sinbaldi wrote on Instagram. “Like I said, my body was reacting faster than my mind so I couldn’t leave that fast.”
Sinbaldi, an advocate for disability rights, asked for people to learn from the birthday mishap.
“Don’t bring my disability [up] in every sentence, is what people, they should know,” she told the outlet.
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