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The Tadich Grill saga: Execs finally give their side of the story - The
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-tadich-grill-saga-execs-finally-give-their-side-of-the-story/2015/11/12/6ffffea4-8959-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html

The Tadich Grill saga: Execs finally give their side of the story

Tadich Grill owners Michael Buich, left, and Gerard Centioli with House
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at Tadich’s opening party in D.C.
(Len DePas)

The owners of the Tadich Grill restaurants in San Francisco and Washington
say they do not tolerate discrimination. They say they have nothing to do
with the dispute between former owner Steve Buich and his daughter Terri
Upshaw. And they say they hope a generational family dispute doesn’t get in
the way of customers enjoying their seafood cioppino.

“The ownership, management and employees of the Tadich Grill are deeply
saddened by the recent newspaper stories regarding Terri Upshaw and her
parents, the former owners of the restaurant,” Michael Buich, son of Steve
Buich, said in a statement. “To be clear, none of the parties involved in
this family dispute own or operate the current restaurant operations in any
way, and our restaurants continue to employ and serve people of all races,
religions and countries of origin. We believe strongly that discrimination
in any form should never be tolerated.”

[Terri Upshaw says she was forced to choose between family and love
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/lonnae-oneal-terri-upshaw-says-she-had-to-choose-between-family-and-love/2015/10/23/b2bdecc2-792a-11e5-b9c1-f03c48c96ac2_story.html>
]

Terri Upshaw spoke publicly about her complicated family history for the
first time last month in this column. The widow of Gene Upshaw, a Hall of
Fame Oakland Raider, told me her family disowned her after she revealed her
relationship with Upshaw in 1983. Terri, who was 23 at the time, is white.
Gene, who was 38 and in the process of divorcing, was African American.

Terri said her husband’s race is the reason that her parents and brother
and sister had not talked to her in more than 30 years, and the reason none
of her family has met her sons, 25 and 28. Her sons have communicated with
cousins only on Facebook, she said. Terri lives in Northern Virginia, and
the second Tadich Grill, co-owned by her brother, Michael, opened to much
fanfare in Washington in early October, which is why the back story came to
my attention.

[Famed San Francisco restaurant brings old school touch to Washington
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/reliable-source/wp/2015/10/01/washington-gets-even-more-old-school-at-tadich-grill-opening/>
]

At the time, neither the Buichs nor Tadich executives would comment.

Reaction to Upshaw’s story was fast and fierce on both coasts. People took
to social media to take sides, especially against the restaurant. Many
posted negative, one-star, “I’ll never eat there” reviews to express their
displeasure with what Upshaw said she had gone through.

The Yelp-bombing got so intense that Yelp posted a note on the Tadich Grill
page: “We will ultimately remove reviews that appear to be motivated more
by the news coverage itself than by the reviewer’s own customer experience
with the business (even if that means removing points of view we might
agree with).”

[After Terri Upshaw accuses her family of racism, the family’s historic
restaurant, Tadich Grill, gets Yelp-bombed
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/going-out-guide/wp/2015/10/27/tadich-grill-is-getting-yelp-bombed/>
]

Gerard Centioli, who has managed the original Tadich Grill since 2009 and
now manages and co-owns the D.C. location, this week called the dispute
“sad,” but maintains that whatever it is about, it is not about the
restaurant.

“As difficult as this kind of family issue is to comprehend, it would be
unfair if the continued hard work of our employees and staff were tarnished
by a complex and personal generational dispute that does not involve this
restaurant, its ownership or staff,” he said in a statement e-mailed to The
Washington Post.

Centioli told me over the phone that the D.C. location has “been well
received” and had a “significant flow of guests.” The restaurants’ numbers
haven’t been affected in either location, he said. “We are simply operating
a restaurant and look forward to serving people of D.C. just as we do the
people of San Francisco.”

Terri’s father, Steve Buich, who is in his early 80s, sold his interest in
Tadich Grill — which started as a coffee stand in 1849 during the
California gold rush and has been in the Buich family since the early 20th
century — to Michael in 1993. The father has not responded to interview
requests but e-mailed this statement to the San Francisco Chronicle (it was
later sent to The Post):

“This is an issue between a father and his daughter and does not extend to
the rest of the family, who have been in contact with Terri and her sons,
despite what the article suggests,” the statement says. “This personal
family matter has nothing to do with Tadich Grill, which I retired from
over 20 years ago. Although I hold a strong belief that the details of my
relationship with my daughter, including those that were omitted from the
article, do not warrant public attention, I do want to make one thing
clear: This has never been a matter of race, but rather the sanctity of
marriage and personal judgment of character. Simply because a dispute
involves people of different races does not mean that the dispute is racial
in nature.”

According to a 1999 San Francisco Business Times
<http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/1999/02/01/story6.html>article,
a former Tadich Grill employee sued the Buichs for racial harassment and
won a $175,000 jury award, later reversed by a judge for what the article
called “technical reasons.”

Centioli had not heard of the lawsuit and said he has no knowledge of
operations before 2009.

In an e-mail response, Michael Buich called the lawsuit an “unfortunate
situation” involving an employee he characterizes as litigious. Buich said
he never demonstrated any discrimination.

“It is the only lawsuit having anything to do with personnel relations
and/or discriminatory claims that I (and to my knowledge Tadich Grill) have
ever been involved with,” he said in the e-mail.

Michael Buich, responding via e-mail earlier this week about the family and
the business, stressed that there was no linkage to “the dispute between my
Dad and my sister and the restaurant (my father retired in 1993 and his
brother in 2000. I purchased the business from them at those respective
times, and have run it since).

“That being said, I have reached out to my sister and am working to bring
the family back together,” he said in the e-mail. “I hope you can recognize
that this is a family issue that doesn’t involve the restaurants, or for
that matter anyone but the family. I am sure you can respect and understand
how difficult any father-daughter dispute can be to patch together.”

For more by O’Neal, visit wapo.st/lonnae.


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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