This greasy spoon did her dirty.
In the concrete jungle — where taking a dip in the murky shallows of the dating pool often leaves wannabe lovebirds high and dry — an online dater claims she was catfished by an East Village eatery that posed as a potential suitor on an app in an effort to get her business.
“I was at the restaurant, thinking I’d been stood up, and ordered a cocktail and a meal for about $45,” Taylor Paré, 33, a vintage fashion curator in Manhattan, told The Post, “only to eventually find out that the restaurant is likely scamming me and other women out of our hard-earned money.”
The singleton shared the disturbing details of her date-night nightmare to a stunned TikTok audience of more than 57,000 viewers.
She chose to neither disclose the name of the restaurant nor the dating app on which she agreed to the outing in mid-November.
“Dating in New York City is like the ‘Hunger Games,’” Paré told The Post, likening the hunt for love in Gotham to the gruesome fight-to-the-death ethos of the film franchise.
“We’re all out here just trying to have a meal with a cute date, and the restaurants have caught on,” added the brunette. “They’re using it as a tactic to increase their business, which is kind of like as dystopian as it gets.”
After matching with a handsome charmer on the app, Paré says he almost immediately offered to wine and dine her at a local bistro.
She was impressed by his direct approach.
“He cut straight to the point and asked to meet up for a nice meal,” said Paré. “I liked that he didn’t invite me to his apartment or some s–tty bar, and I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s go!’
“I’m at a point in my dating life where I don’t want to waste my time or makeup on someone playing games,” said the millennial, who hoped she’d swiped right on Mr. Right.
But after primping for the ill-fated night on the town, Paré waited 15 minutes for her no-show beau to arrive at the joint.
When she reached for her phone, preparing to message the guy about his tardiness via the dating site, the no-nonsense New Yorker discovered that he’d unmatched with her on the app.
Unfazed by the apparent snubbing, Paré enjoyed her dinner, paid the bill and headed home.
However, several days later, while scrolling through an “Are We Dating the Same Guy”-like Facebook forum — a virtual town square, where scorned whistleblowers share red flags about would-be playboys — she was thunderstruck by the notion that she’d been duped.
“A girl in the Facebook group recently had a very similar experience at the same restaurant,” Paré said. “I just started putting two and two together, and it seems like way too much of a coincidence for [the restaurant not to be involved].”
And the single’s suspicions may be right on the money.
In fact, nosheries across the city — including hole-in-the-wall delis and gas stations — have been accused of “tricking” unsuspecting foodies into patronizing their establishments by falsely assuming buzzy restaurant names on apps such as Uber Eats, Grubhub and DoorDash.
The alleged flimflam comes as a byproduct of the ghastly “ghost kitchen” trend, which sees existing restaurants being rented by new crews to operate as “delivery-only” food vendors.
“A lot of small businesses do this,” Sarah Stusek, a 33-year-old content creator from the Maryland area, explained in a TikTok post pertaining to the hoax.
“My favorite thing to do is get on a delivery app … Google the address [to the restaurant] and see what it really is and what they’re hiding,” she said before revealing that a hot spot being advertised on an app as “Burger Den” was actually a Denny’s.
“I refuse to order from ghost kitchens out of principle,” spat a commenter beneath Stusek’s clip, “like how dare you try to bamboozle me.”
The sentiments are echoed by Paré, who tells The Post that she’s been in talks with the East Village grill about the perceived swindle.
“In a world full of so much mess, it’s important to know exactly what you’re getting — whether it’s a man or a meal,” she said.
“This is such a shame,” continued Paré. “Women in New York have to be wary of lies coming from men, but now it seems we have to worry about the restaurants, too.”
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