A New Jersey musician expressed her shock and disappointment after an upscale dining experience took an unexpected turn. The singer-songwriter, who uses a wheelchair, was appalled when her birthday dessert was delivered with an insensitive message at a stylish restaurant.
Antonia Sinbaldi celebrated her 29th birthday in June with loved ones at Blu on the Hudson in Weehawken, NJ. As part of the festivities, she ordered an Apple Tart Tatin for a sweet ending to her meal.
However, the celebratory mood soured when the dessert arrived with “Happy Wheel Chair Birthday” scrawled in sauce on the plate.
Sinbaldi documented the incident with a video during her outing, capturing the moment she received the puff pastry dessert, topped with vanilla ice cream and drizzled in salted caramel, along with the hurtful message.
On Instagram, she voiced her concerns, questioning, “Not to complain about a fairly new restaurant in my town, but why would you make my dessert say this?” She added that the message was more upsetting to her friend accompanying her. “I would never expect that in my town,” she noted, reflecting on the incident.
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.
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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.