‘Saturday Night Live’ Fans Aren’t Impressed By Chloe Fineman’s ‘Don’t You Know Who I Am?’ Restaurant Blowup
Chloe Fineman said that she’s “not a nobody” because she's on Saturday Night Live, which begs the question: who, exactly, does Fineman define as “nobody”?
The typically symbiotic relationship between celebrities and fine-dining establishments in major cities like New York is a delicate one that can quickly turn toxic for both parties should their names ever end up together in a TMZ headline. Back in 2022, James Corden’s feud with the Manhattan brasserie Balthazar created a PR nightmare for the former late-night host and for lauded restaurateur Keith McNally, one which Corden had to quell during a public apology during an episode of The Late Late Show. Now, another New York late-night comedy star is stirring up culinary controversy after she told the story of a hostile interaction at Sant Ambroeus in New York’s Uptown neighborhood.
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According to the SNL star and master impressionist, she and her sister stormed out of the Italian eatery following a confrontation after Fineman approached actress Demi Moore and her celebrity dog Pilaf in what Fineman’s sister is calling the “I’m Not Nobody” incident:
@chloefineman
“We walk in, and they’re like, ‘Oh yes, right this way,’” Fineman explained of her and her sister’s visit to Sant Ambroeus this past weekend in the now-viral TikTok. “So I walk into a room, there’s several empty tables, and I sit down. And then I look up, and it’s Pilaf Littlemouse, the celebrity dog of Demi Moore. And I see Demi Moore, and I was like, ‘Oh, hi!’”
“We’ve met once or twice, and I’ve held Pilaf, because Pilaf was backstage at an SNL show,” Fineman explained of her relationship to the beloved starlet and her mother. “And then the manager sees me, I don’t know, maybe I had no makeup on, I don’t know, did I not look legitimate enough for this empty room of Sant Ambroeus? And the guy’s like, ‘What are you doing here? Ma’am, come, come with me, now!’”
Fineman says that she must have unintentionally broken the Sant Ambroeus seating protocal, explaining, “I guess I like didn’t realize that you have to, like, talk to another Italian guy to get a seat, even though there’s like a thousand empty tables, it was very confusing.” But, after the irate manger herded the Finemans out of Moore”s section, the SNL star says that a side of her of which she”s not particularly proud came out.
“This is what I said, I said, ‘Calm down, I’m not nobody, I”m on SNL.' He was like, ‘I don’t care who you are, I treat everybody the same, you have to talk to me first,”” Fineman recalled. “A personality of mine started to come up that I don”t love, so I took myself out of the situation. You could call it a Karen, I also call it living in New York, and everyone is, like, rude as fuck.”
After TMZ, The New York Post and The Independent picked up Fineman”s TikTok, her indignant retelling of the Sant Ambroeus incident spread throughout the online SNL fandom, including on the SNL subreddit where a thread about the incident shot to the top of the front page.
In this fan forum, SNL-watchers seemed to side with Sant Ambroeus in the spat, with the top comment reading, “Chloe pulled the ‘don’t you know who I am.’ Honestly it sounds like the restaurant manager was trying to protect his guest.” The fan added of the possibly Sicilian service worker, “He can’t know every celebrity in town. Maybe slightly overzealous but Chloe comes off as a little entitled here.”
“Remember how that video of Adam Sandler getting turned away at the IHOP made everyone love him even more?” another user added of the 2021 viral video wherein the Sandman graciously accepted a 30-minute wait time at the breakfast chain. “Same thing here except the opposite.”
While Fineman was clear in her post that she didn’t think her behavior was acceptable, her viral confrontation at Sant Ambroeus is coming dangerously close to being yet another one of those “celebrity berates restaurant worker” stories that are so popular in all the gossip blogs. However, Fineman isn’t without her defenders, including English D.J. and heiress Samantha Ronson who came to Fineman’s defense in the comments of her TikTok.
“Lol. I was there with Pilaf and her mom, and we were so confused and horrified,” Ronson wrote. “That was so rude. I’m sorry. You can sit with us, next time.”
Next time, Fineman and her sister should get out of snooty Uptown and find a spot a little further south for their lunch — maybe they’ll be able to get a table at the Greenwich Village IHOP.
