New York restaurant popular with celebrities 'bans solo women from its bar'

'After further interrogation, it transpired that the owner had ordered a crackdown on hookers: the free-range escorts who roamed the Upper East Side,' says regular customer

A regular customer at the Italian restaurant in Manhattan claims she was ushered to a table and informed nobody was allowed to eat at the bar anymore (Getty)

An upmarket New York restaurant which is popular with celebrities has reportedly banned women from sitting alone at the bar.

Clementine Crawford, a regular customer at the Italian restaurant in Manhattan, claimed she was ushered to a table and informed nobody was allowed to eat at the bar anymore.

Ms Crawford, a creative executive of branding firm Finch & Partners, made further inquiries after she noticed a man sat at her favourite spot earing a meal. She claims she then learned the owner had ordered a crackdown on prostitutes.

The customer, who divides her time between London and New York, wrote about the alleged incident in an essay called "The Night I was mistaken for a Call Girl”.

"All these years we have been battling for a room of one's own; and, little did we know it, but we are still fighting for a seat at the table (or bar, to be strictly accurate)," the London resident wrote in the piece that was published in media outlet Drugstore Culture.

Ms Crawford, who said she had dined at the bar of the Madison Avenue establishment frequently for years, said on this particular occasion she was "perched at my favourite seat at the bar" when a waiter "advised – with evident embarrassment – that I was no longer permitted to eat at my usual spot and that I must now sit down at a table”.

She said she went back a few days later and it happened again.

"Nobody was able to eat at the bar. Company policy,” staff were said to have told her.

She said she followed the instructions but noticed a man at the bar being served a pasta dinner – completed with a limoncello.

"Why, I wondered, was I suddenly being treated so frostily? After further interrogation, it transpired that the owner had ordered a crackdown on hookers: the free-range escorts who roamed the Upper East Side, hunting prey in his establishment," Ms Crawford said.

"But hang on: Did this mean they thought that I was an escort? Or could be mistaken for one? At first, I was incensed. Not because I am judgmental about the world's oldest profession, but because this treatment struck me as outright discrimination. They had classified me, marginalised me, relegated me to the corner by the loos simply because I was an unaccompanied woman."

While Crawford did not identify the restaurant in the essay she told The New York Post it was it was Nello – an expensive Italian restaurant known for being frequented by Beyoncé and Sarah Jessica Parker.

A number of reviews on Yelp offered up comments after Ms Crawford's story.

"If you want pasta with a side of sexism, eat here," one reviewer said.

Another called for the restaurant to amend its policy, saying: "I eat alone at NYC bars all the time, and relish the fact that I've earned the right with my hard work to spoil myself. I can't imagine this happening in any of the places I frequent."

The Independent contacted a representative of Nello for comment. The restaurant has refused to comment to other publications.