Vinay Menon: James Corden is Mr. Nice Guy on TV and a ‘tiny Cretin’ in fancy restaurants

If James Corden saunters into the restaurant where you are a server, fake an illness and slip out the kitchen exit.

That way there is no chance a flute of Prosecco gets dumped over your head should Mr. Corden fly into a rage because the sesame seeds on his Bigeye Tuna Crudo are not suitably toasted to complement the caviar and fennel.

Since arriving on this side of the pond, the late night host has cultivated a Mr. Nice Guy image on TV. He mostly sidesteps corrosive politics to play the role of jester, a goofy cherub prone to jazz hands and carpool karaoke.

But when the cameras are not rolling, while Corden is chowing down at a Manhattan hot spot, it seems Mr. Nice Guy can morph into a “tiny Cretin of a man.” That was the description of NYC restaurateur Keith McNally, who took to Instagram this week to call Corden “the most abusive customer to my Balthazar servers since the restaurant opened 25 years ago.”

McNally disclosed two recent incidents.

In the first, Corden reportedly found a hair in his main course and was “extremely nasty” to the manager. Corden demanded “another round of drinks.” He also called for all beverages on his tab to be comped.

I would have sent the hair to a forensic lab to see if it was his.

In the second incident, Corden and his wife were brunching on the patio this month. There was a snafu with her “egg yolk omelette with gruyere cheese and salad.” Specifically, the couple spotted a “little bit of egg white,” which apparently is like finding plutonium in your polenta.

As an aside, what is an egg yolk omelette? Can you make an omelette out of just yolks? Isn’t that like a blueberry pancake made from just blueberries? I mean, why didn’t Mrs. Corden order a bowl of Hollandaise sauce?

Anyway, the poor server apologized, informed the floor manager and the frazzled chefs took a second crack at her pretentious eggs. Alas, this time the side was botched as the salad was accidentally replaced with home fries.

You can’t just dump starchy carbs on a celebrity table! That’s a screamfest!

“That’s when James Corden began yelling like crazy to the server: ‘You can’t do your job! You can’t do your job! Maybe I should go into the kitchen and cook the omelette myself!’” wrote McNally, prefacing this Bad Customer outburst with news Corden was hereby banned from his establishment.

But it didn’t last long. In less time than it takes Corden to get through a 10-course tasting menu, the comedian “apologized profusely.”

The ban was lifted. As McNally wrote in a followup: “… anyone magnanimous enough to apologize to a deadbeat layabout like me (and my staff) doesn’t deserve to be banned from anywhere … All is Forgiven.”

This about-face is why celebrities keep behaving badly at swish bistros.

McNally should have told Corden to take his apology and whisk it into his wife’s next egg yolk omelette. He should have stood by a zero-tolerance policy for abuse against his staff. Instead, he caved like an ill-timed soufflé.

Celebrities only dine at a handful of fancy joints in any city. It’s why you will never spot Drake or Justin Bieber at Swiss Chalet. But owners of the fancy joints don’t seem to realize they have all the power. If they permanently ban a Jeremy Piven for being a douchebag or quietly inform Usher his autograph is not a viable tip substitute on a pricey bill, that sends a clear message to every other A-lister who wants to snag an elusive table on Saturday night.

Lock your entitlement in the glove box before handing the keys to the valet.

There is no better litmus test for the true character of a celebrity than to see how they treat restaurant staff. Lady Gaga is, by all accounts, a wonderful human being. Kirsten Dunst, not so much. So many servers in this city have regaled me with celebrity encounters over the years — especially during the Toronto International Film Festival — that were either good or bad. I now have fuzzy personality profiles filed in my subconscious that, right or wrong, feel instructive.

Ethan Hawke is a class act. Robert De Niro is a difficult weirdo.

Johnny Depp is a prince. John Travolta will send back an entrée 10 times.

Ultimately, this is all gossip. I have no clue if Madonna, as I’ve been told by more than one insider, is a godawful tipper. But that’s her rep. She can change her face. But she can’t change her rep.

That might be the weirdest part about these James Corden revelations.

Do celebrities not realize we live in a world where every public action will be scrutinized and blabbed about on social media? It’s not the olden days, when Frank Sinatra could hoof a barkeep in the nutsack with no fear of bad PR after his gin martini was mistakenly garnished with olives instead of a twist.

Restaurant servers, among the hardest hit during the pandemic lockdowns, should not have to mollycoddle mercurial egomaniacs from showbiz ever again. Enough. The customer is not always right, not when he is boldface and the complaint involves a dubious whinge over “Eggs in Purgatory.”

It’s the tomato ragoût that was in purgatory! I demand free Cristal!

James Corden is now free to return to Balthazar. What a disgrace.

This hothead should be banned from every hot spot in the free world.

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