MTL Blog is Pissed That Somebody Imitated Them To Skip Restaurant Line

Montreal’s pre-eminent online purveyor of exclamation points and clickbait MTL Blog is really mad that someone used their good name to get free food, and they’re going to make sure you know about it, in very short and easy-to-read sentences.

According to MTL Blog, who have a screencap of the now-deleted Facebook post, Montrealer Peter Manirath pretended to be an MTL Blog writer at Laval breakfast chain restaurant Petinos in order to skip the line. It was a success, and Manirath received VIP treatment with perfect service, according to his own Facebook post. It was likely helped by the fact that Petinos appears on various MTL Blog “best of” lists.

It’s known from past experience that MTL Blog is sensitive to people imitating them, even as a joke, and writer Jeremy Hazan wasn’t going to put up with it. Hazan complains that Maniraith “pretended that he was a food blogger who worked for us in order to get special VIP treatment,” ignoring the fact that “special” is an implicit part of “VIP”.

The same website that decided it was ethical to take photos from 18-year-olds’ private Facebook accounts without consent to publish articles about how attractive they were is really upset about this ethical breach, as Hazan writes.

“Apparently we weren’t the only ones who thought that what Peter did was a dick move. He actually ended up deleting his Facebook status because he was receiving too many negative comments. Perhaps bragging about being an asshole wasn’t the best strategy.”

Hazan frames the issue as one of Maniraith screwing with the restaurant, but it’s notable that he did pay for the meal, meaning the only wrongdoing was the queue-jumping.

Anyway, Hazan claims that “the staff at MTL Blog make it a point to never mention that fact when we eat somewhere,” before going on to say that MTL Blog’s lists are made out of love for restaurants and not due to receiving special treatment.

But MTL Blog has charged bars for event coverage before, so it’s safe to say not everything MTL Blog does is out of sheer love.

In any case, MTL Blog’s criteria for its “best of” lists for bars or restaurants aren’t particularly clear, so if you have any insight on the matter, tell us about it.

• Montreal Man Pretends To Be MTL Blog Food Writer To Skip Line At Restaurant And Posts It On Facebook [MTLBlog]
• BMTL Banned From Facebook [SoooMTL]
• MTL Blog removes 'hot' articles based on students' social media profiles [CBC]
• 40 questions about MTL Blog’s ethics [Fagstein]