Tinucci's gets revenge on Randy

• No Moss

The first 50 customers who handed over a Randy Moss jersey starting at noon on Friday received a free buffet lunch at Tinucci's. Moss unleashed an expletive-laced critique of the Tinucci's-supplied lockerroom buffet before being cut by the Vikings earlier this week.
• Tinucci's t-shirts

T-shirts that declared, "Tinucci's caters to the classy ... No Moss!"were selling fast during Friday's event.

Talk about it

No such thing as a free lunch, right?

Well, except at Tinucci’s in Newport on Friday, where the first 50 fans who turned over a Randy Moss jersey got a complimentary lunch of the buffet spread that the ex-Viking dissed in a locker room tirade before he was cut by the team last week.

Hundreds packed the Newport restaurant’s dining room to turn over jerseys for a free lunch, or dine on the specially priced lunch buffet — $8.40, a play on Moss’ jersey number — and listen to local sports talk station ESPN 1500 broadcast live from the restaurant.

Brent Brommer showed up shortly before noon with a well-worn purple Moss jersey on to support the popular east metro restaurant. The Woodbury resident’s opinion of the ex-Viking for his Tinucci’s-related tirade?

“(Moss’) behavior is pretty much inexcusable,” he said. “I have a word for it. I call him a jerk-o-holic.”

Friends Tom Nelson and Brian Burgoyne drove from Burnsville and Savage, respectively, for Friday’s event. While they waited in a line for a table that, by 12:30, stretched nearly an hour, the Vikings fans said they wanted to support a restaurant they hadn’t been to in more than 20 years in light of Moss’ comments.

“I’m glad it’s turning out for good,” Nelson said.

Tinucci’s purveyor Gus Tinucci — one of three Tinucci brothers who own the more than 50-year-old restaurant — said the event was just meant to poke a little fun at the situation.

“We’re having fun,” he said on-air with ESPN 1500 hosts Pat Reusse and Phil Mackey, taking a break from bussing tables in the busy dining room. “He was wrong; we were just doing our job…It could have been a lobster buffet and he would have said the same thing.”

The discarded Moss jerseys will be donated to the Boys and Girls Club of Nashville, Tenn., the home of the Tennessee Titans team that signed Moss after his exit from Minnesota.

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