High-maintenance celebrity diners: 5 stars who have been rude to waitstaff

1. Tiger Woods

In 2011, the Miami New Times put together its list of the Top Ten Cheapest Celebrity Tippers – with Tiger Woods sitting pretty in the top spot. The newspaper reported an incident in which Woods – while playing a US$10,000 hand of blackjack, no less – “pulled a mulligan on a US$5 tip, re-pocketing the money meant for a waitress after realising he had tipped her earlier in the evening”.

Per the same outlet, another woman reported that she’d had to pay all the tips whenever they would go out together. Mindy Lawton, a restaurant hostess who had a 14-month affair with Woods, also told Vanity Fair in 2010 that her co-workers had complained the golfing legend was a bad tipper too.

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2. James Corden

Restaurateur Keith McNally called Corden “a tiny Cretin of a man” and “the most abusive customer to my Balthazar servers since the restaurant opened 25 years ago” on his Instagram account. Corden allegedly “began yelling like crazy to the server: ‘You can’t do your job!’” – after his wife’s omelette order came out incorrectly. Corden apologised publicly for his “unnecessary” behaviour, as reported in US Weekly, and McNally wrote in a follow-up post on Instagram, “All is forgiven.”

3. Jeremy Piven

When it comes to embarrassing dining exposés, actor and comedian Jeremy Piven’s night at celebrity chef Nobu Matsuhisa’s restaurant Matsuhisa ranks right up there.

In 2007, Piven was attending the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, when he decided to swing by the restaurant with a group of at least a dozen friends and no reservation, according to the New York Daily News. “It was a very busy night, but a table, although cramped, was provided,” a source from the restaurant told the newspaper. “On his way out, [Piven] made a nasty comment to the manager, saying, ‘Thanks for nothing,’” the source added. He was banned from ever returning to Matsuhisa, and later also banned from visiting Nobu’s LA and New York eateries.

4. Meghan Markle

The restaurant’s staff weren’t able to provide adjacent tables in a private room, so suggested a corner table instead. “They came in with an attitude,” Cecchi-Azzolina said, adding that an “aloof” Markle didn’t speak a word to the staff either.

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5. Anna Wintour

We all know the devil wears Prada, but did you know she likes her steak really rare? Troublemaking maitre d’ Michael Cecchi-Azzolina wrote in his 2022 memoir Your Table is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D’, that Anna Wintour was “absolutely horrid” to the staff at Le Coucou, per Business Insider.

Cecchi-Azzolina claimed she would “march in” without a reservation and demand a table, then order a steak very rare and ask to be served immediately. “God forbid it was the least bit overcooked,” he wrote. “She’d look at the server as though he’d just served her rat and have it sent back and redone.” He also recalled: “One time, she came in and we were closing the back room, and she insisted on sitting in the back room.” The result of this was having to station a waiter in the back room especially for the Vogue editor-in-chief.