Sharing a dessert with your dining companion is nothing new, but a same-sex couple in D.C. claims that when they asked their server for two spoons so they could split a sundae, they were told such a thing wouldn’t be possible, and doesn’t go with the “ambiance” of the restaurant.

A couple who recently had dinner at an eatery touting its reputation as a romantic restaurant says their experience was anything but after they requested two spoons for one dessert, reports The Washington Post.

They claim their server told them that they’d get their sundae in separate dishes.

“He said ‘It wouldn’t look right with two gentlemen eating out of the same sundae,’” one of the men recalled to the Post. “‘It doesn’t go with the ambiance of the restaurant.’ ”

They were rendered speechless, the men said, because they weren’t expecting it: Until that point, their meal had been great, the men noted.

The couple says they left their server a 15% tip instead of the usual 20% they usually add to restaurant tabs, and left without bringing the issue to a manager because they were feeling “kind of embarrassed.”

After a night’s rest, however, they decided to post about the incident on Facebook and Yelp.

The restaurant’s manager tells the Post that he’s piecing together what happened and hasn’t yet spoken to the server about the encounter in detail. He says the server is Bulgarian, and his first language is not English. While he speaks four different languages, the manager said that perhaps the waiter “got confused as to what he was saying, or how he was saying it.”

“I cannot believe that a waiter would have ever said anything like that,” the manager said, noting that he plans to reach out to the couple. “There’s no way we would condone anything remotely like this.”

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