After waiting another 10 minutes, Perng said she asked to speak to the manager. Then, she said, the hostess returned and told the group the table they were waiting for would only seat 10 people.

Perng said when she spoke with the manager, she asked him why the group was not seated immediately once it told the hostess it intended to order dinner.

The group was seated and Sheerin then came to speak to them. Perng said in an e-mail message, "[Sheerin] said that we looked young and that he was doing us a favor by seating us. He insisted that he did not have to seat us."

But Perng was careful to avoid any direct call for a boycott and treaded carefully the line between accusation of discrimination and accusation of bad hosting.

"I won't go back. I told my friends not to go back, just like as if I had received bad service at Cambridge Common or Legal Seafood," she said. "But there was something more here. Our treatment was different because we were Asian."

The meeting closed without the members reaching a general consensus on a boycott or a discrimination charge.