"My body just started shaking": The outrageous birthday greeting at a luxury restaurant

Antonia Sinibaldi, a singer and disability rights activist, wanted to celebrate her 29th birthday at the luxury restaurant "Blue on the Hudson" in New Jersey, but the festive evening turned into a particularly humiliating experience: on the dessert plate served to her table, it was written in chocolate: "Happy Birthday Wheelchair".

Sinibaldi, who uses a wheelchair and a ventilator, was celebrating at the venue alongside family and friends. In an interview with NBC New York, she said:

"My body just started shaking and convulsing. It reacted faster than my mouth or my head. My family is angry, my friends are even angrier, but I am just shocked by this."

Sinibaldi has used a wheelchair for most of her life after being injured in a car accident caused by a drunk driver in 1999, when she was a toddler. Earlier this year, she even had to relearn how to speak following a brain injury.

"A human error by a kitchen employee"

In an official apology statement sent to the magazine People, the restaurant's management stated: "We sincerely apologize to the guest and to anyone who was hurt or offended by the incident." A spokesperson for the venue claimed that it was a human error without malicious intent: the word "wheelchair" was written on the internal order note solely to assist the waitstaff in locating the diner, but a kitchen employee mistakenly understood it as part of the greeting to be written on the plate.

The restaurant staff's apology did not convince Sinibaldi, and she does not intend to return to the place. In a post on her Instagram account, Sinibaldi defined the restaurant's explanation as "BS" and clarified that the apology did not feel sincere to her. In an interview with the TV station WCBS in New York, she concluded: "Don't mention my disability in every sentence. You are not supposed to remind me of something I already know."