WBOB Original Reads

UPDATE: Marrocco Responds to WBOB After Racially Charged Comments Exposed

1/17/2018

On Tuesday, 990WBOB published a story about Federal Hill restauranteur, Gianfranco Marrocco, and racially charged comments made from his Facebook account directed toward a neighboring restaurant.

That story has been shared dozens of times, and elicited hundreds of comments on social media.

Click Here for Original Story

On Wednesday, Marrocco reached out to WBOB to offer his side of the story.

"My Facebook account got compromised by someone who is targeting that I have had issues and problems with," Marrocco claimed. "So, I apologize to anyone whom I offended."

In the story, Marrocco, the self-proclaimed "King of the Hill," who owns several Federal Hill establishments including Caffe Dolce Vita, and the shuttered $3 Bar, made culturally insensitive comments in response to a favorable review for Opa Restaurant on Atwells Avenue.

The saga began after a patron of Opa posted to Facebook this week a comment (full post below), "Best place in Rhode Island if you want a traditional Lebanese experience. This is the real deal,"

An account registered to Marrocco replied:

"Maybe one of his cousins will walk in with a back pack full of explosives one day."

In addition to Marrocco's claim that his Facebook account had been hacked, he offered the following response to WBOB:

"It’s no secret I don’t like Mr. Karam nor [sic] his family, and I have said this to him in person face to face, I don’t need social media to express it again. But I wouldn’t never [sic] generalize or stereotype any culture or ethnic group as all bad, there are good, bad, and ugly in all races There are some Italians I wouldn’t urinate on if they were on fire," said Marrocco. "And for the record, I was doing middle eastern night at Mediterraneo in 1997... way before Mr. Karam."