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.

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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."

UPDATE: Marrocco Responds to WBOB After Racially Charged Comments Exposed

Click Here for Original Story

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