Austin Restaurant Vince Young Steakhouse Is Upset at the City’s ‘Stay Home’ Order

Downtown Austin restaurant Vince Young Steakhouse is mad at Austin Mayor Steve Adler and the city’s “stay home work safe” order, which was expressed with a now-deleted tweet yesterday.

One of the owners of the restaurant — either executive chef Philip Brown or Laura McIngvale-Brown — tweeted a video of Lance Armstrong saying “fuck you” repeatedly while holding up the middle finger and wrote, “When [Adler] tries to override [Texas Governor Greg Abbott] and extend stay at home orders and preventing us from being able to provide for our staff and families.” The clip was taken from ESPN’s documentary about the cyclist.

In the tweet’s replies, the restaurant had double-downed on its stance, writing that “Adler is trying to scare people into continuing to stay home by extending his order when he knows his order doesn’t matter anymore;” and that “telling folks a [sic] stay at home is [sic] in place scares them even if they may want to go out,” and that:

“We are not politicizing anything. The mayor is the one playing the politics game by contradicting the Governor and the top state health offices. By him doing that he is hurting small business. This is our livelihood not politics.”

Vince Young Steakhouse’s account also repeated that it was following all government orders and safety measures. Scope out images of some of the replies below.

Austin’s current “stay home work stay order,” which has been extended to the end of May for now, encourages people to continue to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. The order still allows people to visit essential services (which includes picking up restaurant takeout) while also making allowances for visits to reopened businesses under the governor’s reopening plan (which includes going out for dine-in service at restaurants at the now-50 percent indoor capacity limit).

Both the tweet and all but one of its replies have since been deleted. The restaurant also had posted an apology note to its Twitter page later that evening, but then deleted it the next day. The note had said that they removed the original tweet because “the video we used contained offensive language that is not representative of the Vince Young Steakhouse brand.”

It had continued: “We apologize to Mayor Adler and our guests for any offense caused by an opinion that was posted out of frustration over circumstances in which we all find ourselves.” Read it below.

The Browns opened the steakhouse in 2010 (within the same building that housed the Real World cast in 2005). The restaurant is named after quarterback Vince Young, who played for both the University of Texas Austin and Tennessee Titans.

Update, May 28, 12:09 p.m. This article, originally published on Wednesday, May 27, has been updated to include new information about Vince Young Steakhouse’s apology tweet.

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