UNBELIEVABLE : A member of staff at a five-star Paris hotel reported claimed that Serena Williams was ‘unrecognisable’, after the tennis star claimed she and her kids were refused entry to a rooftop restaurant… | HO

The 23-time Grand Slam winner took to X to publicly complain about the treatment she received at The Peninsula Hotel on Monday, sharing her annoyance at the way in which her visit went down.

Sharing a snap of the hotel, she wrote alongside it: ‘Yikes. @peninsulaparis I’ve been denied access to rooftop to eat in a empty restaurant of nicer places but never with my kids. Always a first.’

The hotel hit back in a post on X, claiming that the only unoccupied tables she saw belonged to their gourmet restaurant, L’Oiseau Blanc, which they said was fully booked.

A member of staff at the hotel’s rooftop restaurant, Maxime Mannevy, has reportedly claimed that Williams looked ‘unrecognisable’, according to her colleague who was working at the time.

She told Variety: ‘When she came there were only two tables available and they had been reserved by clients of the hotel.

‘My colleague didn’t recognise her and feels terrible, but he told her what he would have told any other client, which is to wait downstairs in the bar for a table to become available. That was absolutely nothing personal.’

The restaurant in their response on X said: ‘Dear Mrs. Williams, Please accept our deepest apologies for the disappointment you encountered tonight