Insults with your burger? Our sweary night out as Manchester's 'rudest restaurant' goes under
It was one of the most controversial dining experiences that Manchester has seen in recent years. When Karen's Diner opened in Prestwich back in 2022, diners were firmly divided.
Some relished the restaurant's poor service and purposely 'rude' staff, while others saw it as gimmicky and the stuff of nightmares. After two years of offending customers, the Bury New Road restaurant closed its doors in June.
At the time, a spokesperson for the chain said it would be turning its attention to ‘pop up’ events rather than restaurants. Now, just months later, the company behind Karen’s Diner - and Broadway Diner - has gone into liquidation.
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With the chain having served its final burger - and scathing insult - we take a look back at what our restaurant reviewer made of Karen's Diner when he visited two years ago.
Part dining experience, part theatre
Straight out of the gate, the idea of going to Karen’s Diner filled me with dread. As anyone who’s been dragged into immersive theatre against their will would know, the cold, clammy terror of being picked on is very real. Karen’s is an Australian concept, first opened in Sydney. It’s part dining experience, part theatre, where the waiting staff are purposely rude, unhelpful, dismissive (if you’re lucky) and scorched-earth offensive (if you’re not).
And so Karen’s Diner is my idea of dining hell. Confrontation, stress, tension and awkwardness. Profanity, I enjoy very much. But the rest? No. No, no, no. So I arrived at the recently opened branch in Prestwich - there’s another in Sheffield which opened in February and another in Birmingham - wanting to be pretty much anywhere else in the world.
“Reservation?” Yes. “Name?” Ben. “Sh*t name.” “It’s your mum’s name, isn’t it?” fires back my dining companion, and I wince. She can be gobby. “A-HA-HA-HA-HA,” screams the waitress back inches from her face, before stopping dead with the fake laughter. People are now looking. On a table in the corner, I can see a woman wearing a poorly folded paper hat. On it is scrawled ‘messy b**ch’ in biro.
We walk past the bar where a waitress is snarling as she pours a shot into a mug that is shaped like a toilet. We’re appointed another waitress. “Special occasion?” she asks. She looks my dining partner up and down and before the reply comes, she adds: “Maybe not.”
And I do chuckle a bit at that. We’re shown to easily the worst table in the room, right by the bar. There’s only one chair. So I just stand there, waiting for one or other of us to blink. The waitress fixes me in the eye, and then wanders off, so I sheepishly pull one from another table and sit myself down. She wins again.
On the table behind, a group of lads are getting a bit too into the ‘talking back’. One has a semi-legitimate concern (it does eventually get sorted out) about his burger, which is too rare. “A good vet could bring that back to life!” he quips to a waiter, an older gentleman with greying hair, whose face drops.
“Rare burger? No one’s f**king died yet, grow up,” he spits and walks off. When they weren’t given any cutlery, one of them bellowed back at their waitress "It’s alright though, I’m very good with me ‘ands," laughing uproariously at his own joke. It’s right on the edge of the rules on the Karen’s website - remarkably, there are some rules; no racism, no sexism, and no ‘sexual remarks against our staff members’. She handles it admirably, but after that, I’m sort of hoping they get eviscerated (and later on, they do).
We’re tossed a couple of the menus. At the door, I see a couple with a reservation being forced to wait outside in the drizzle, even though there’s plenty of room in the foyer. Our waitress returns for the drinks order. I order a Camden Pale, pointing at the tap handles on the bar. “Oh they’re just for show, we don’t serve hipster beer,” she says with a polite smile. We get a less flouncy beer and a cocktail which comes in a cheap plastic coconut.
She asks me where I’m from, and - I still don’t know why - I freeze and then say ‘I don’t know’. She looks back at me witheringly. “You don’t know where you’re from?” I reply, “I do, I just don’t know how to answer the question.”
She shakes her head slowly at me in disgust and pity. She’s right to do so. I order the Karen’s American Cousin (wagyu beef patties, bacon, swiss cheese and whatnot, £14.50, including french fries), and my dining partner orders the Vegan Karen (£9.50, plant-based patty, vegan cheese, beetroot, avocado, aioli).
“Are you vegan?” our waitress asks. “No, vegetarian,” my friend replies. “Bad enough,” and she signals to another waitress who picks up a microphone. I have a bad feeling about this. “Everyone, we have a vegetarian in the restaurant,” comes the announcement over the speakers. “After three, I want everyone here to shout ‘f**k off veggie’.” They do, gleefully, as my dining partner laughs, and shoves two middle fingers into the air.
There are a few children in, I notice, and to be honest, they seem to be very much enjoying how rude the adults in the room are being. Though there is one genuinely shocking moment. One large family - including several children - is being ejected from the restaurant after paying their bill in a hail of expletives. It’s brutal already, and everyone turns to witness it. But then, as they’re walking out of the door, the waitress screams: “SANTA’S NOT REAL.” They mustn’t have tipped.
There’s a deep intake of breath through the whole restaurant, and then howls of disbelief. Even the other servers seem properly shaken, hands over mouths. You can swear as much as you like, be as offensive as Bernard Manning at the Embassy in 1972. But she went there, and it almost has to be respected.
After that, I need another drink. I wave to a waitress to get another round. She smiles, waves back and carries on walking. Some ketchup arrives, and is upturned on the table. I’m very much starting to warm to this place.
As that group of lads - ‘good with me ‘ands’ - behind us get up to leave, the head waitress - the most vicious of the bunch, the ‘Santa’ one - grabs the microphone and says: “Everyone we have a birthday.” The lads look confused. “So after three…” and she leads the whole restaurant in a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday F**k Off’. “Hip hip, f**k off’ she bellows three times, before signing off with ‘Bye bye, tiny c**k’.” The whole room roars, the lads red faced, but creased in half laughing. A large tip goes in the jar.
As we leave, Santa waitress asks: “You leaving?” “Yes,” we reply. “Well, thank f**k for that, see ya,” she says, and gives us the finger. It is a fitting exit.
Karen’s is a lot. Perhaps too much. But from dreading going to leaving wanting to tell everyone about it, that’s a pretty wild success. The staff keep up the relentless abuse throughout, so hats off to them. With the possible exception of ‘The Santa Incident’, they deftly skirted the edge of what’s acceptable, though some might find it all to be completely unacceptable of course. But it must be exhausting for the staff, and I hope they get the respect they deserve, because bad service and quality abuse like this isn’t easy. I loved it. Would I go again? Possibly not. Am I glad I went? Definitely.