I hope you know that I respect your knowledge (and I imagine that, if I were to meet you in-person, I’d respect you as a person, too). But I have to say that I’m a bit confused about some of your arguments.
If you wish to advocate for him to give more balance to the discussion, by all means continue to do so.
If you wish to call out Eater for language that could be excessively inflammatory, again, con’t to do so.
But I don’t think you get tell people how they should feel. With all due respect, that is simply not your place.
If people want to be mad, they’re going to be mad. And that is their prerogative. To a certain extent, it needs to run its course. In a year where people have lost so much through no fault of their own, defending a man who might lose his business (and, in all honestly, he may not) b/c he put his own foot in his own mouth just seems a curious choice to me. But that is your prerogative.
I don’t know if people “want” him to lose his business. But, if it’s anything the year 1-5 yrs has taught has, it’s that logic and rational thought do not always win.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we should abandon all rational thought. But, IMHO, it would come across differently (and perhaps be more digestible to others?) if you simply con’t to present what Schlosser has done to support the Japanese community and express a hope that other people forgive him.
maybe he is all for promoting Japanese cuisine but it seems he has a lot to learn about Japanese Americans and their history.
Maybe Japanese and Japanese Americans are totally different, nuanced things and maybe he could’ve avoided all this by not putting JA’s and their restaurants down.
It’s just another Rick Bayless type of attitude coming to LA and claiming the Mexican food here is bland.
How long has Schlosser been here in LA? He’s been here awhile now. Did he take the time to learn about what Japanese had to go through in America, the internment camps, the assimilation they went through to be accepted? the freakin JA museum is right there in Little Tokyo
It’s the arrogance and ignorance that’s off putting. The flippant attitude of him thinking he knows best.
I don’t want his restaurant or him to fail but maybe he needed to get called out and eat some humble pie.
I definitely don’t think he should be canceled or lose his business I don’t think anyone here is saying that but people are pissed off and he handled it really poorly.
It doesn’t come across that he’s learned anything from all this, if he had been a little more humble it would have gone a long way.
That being said I doubt he’ll lose his business but he didn’t make any friends and considering he’s opening another high profile place his antics could hurt other good people.
TL:DR So chef David should just quietly make his sakura mochi, promote it on instagram and shut the F*** up about how other Japanese businesses are preserving their own culture.
This. You sell foods outside your culture frequently—no one has ever (at least to my knowledge) complained. And to my knowledge, Shibumi hasn’t had such a big public outrage prior to this. Because it’s not and never been about who can cook what.
Maybe it’s because when you were promoting your com gà hai nam, bánh mì, yakitori, okonomiyaki, and oden…you didn’t tell the Vietnamese and Japanese restaurants/community how you know and care more and how yours is so superior. Maybe.
Why does everything have to be about racism? I don’t think what he said was racist. I don’t know him, never met him, only know what I’ve read about him online, but his post just came off as a very arrogant egomaniac not unlike many other chefs everywhere in the world. Why are we so fixated that he’s a white guy cooking japanese food? He obviously has studied japanese cuisine, lived in Japan, and seems to have high reverence for the culture and cuisine? Do we judge with the same lens when a jewish chef cooks italian food? Or when an asian chef cooks french food?
Everything isn’t about racism but in this specific case what he said had racial implications because he is a white person that is cooking a minority culture’s cuisine and that minority group has faced a history of discrimination and repression in the past. Context matters.
That is your opinion and you’re totally entitled to that, but just because you don’t think it’s true doesn’t mean others shouldn’t think its true. And especially if you’re not a minority in this country (I’m not saying I know if you are or not) I really don’t think it’s appropriate for the white majority to tell minorities what is racist or not. It’s like white people deciding how and when black people can and can’t use the n-word.
When an egomaniac says something that is [insert additionally poor adjective] that person is both an egomaniac and [insert additionally poor adjective] it’s not a mutually exclusive proposition.
To my knowledge prior to his post no one has been fixated that he is a white guy cooking japanese food, especially not in a negative manner. From all the posts prior he has been massively embraced by the LA community (including LA Japanese American community) at large. But when a white guy calls out the culture that he is supposedly representing/promoting and when that culture has faced a history of repression and discrimination within the country and locale again that context matters.
Great no one is denying his credentials! He’s earned the right to be considered knowledgeable about the cuisine but that doesn’t meen that it’s ok for him to go about denigrating and talking down to the japanese culture and people and then deleting AAPI posts when he supposedly is an ally of asian americans. And that is what we are all calling him out for, not because he hasn’t studied japanese food or that he isn’t entitled to provide an opinion, or solely based on the fact that he is white. He gave his opinion and that along with his continued behavior revealed how much of an ass he is.
All those contexts are different, it depends on the race relations in that culture and what has occurred historically in that society. I would be happy to dissect each one for you, but to quote @JLee
I’m sure the French people, so protectively of their culture and cuisine, would surely but outraged picketing if any of these Asian chefs with Michelin starred French restaurants said the same thing about French food and culture.
" [Insert iconic French dessert] . Yet no French restaurant are featuring it? So sad. Makes my life harder. It’s because these French restaurants don’t understand, appreciate or care about promoting what French cuisine is all about. Come get it at…"
I agree, and for the record, I think what chef David said was disrespectful to all the chefs cooking Japanese food in our city. My point simply was that there’s no racism at play here. He clearly loves everything Japanese.
Oh, I don’t know about that. Would it have caused the same uproar? Prob not. But, depending on whether said hypothetical chef was Japanese vs. Japanese-American and depending on what generation said chef belong to, it absolutely would’ve gotten a response from within the community, if “that culture” operates anything like other East Asian communities.
Posters have said here that part of the reason why this whole incident is getting so much attention is b/c the chef is white. Well, that works in multiple ways. Perhaps intra-ethnic culinary conflicts don’t get as much popular press is b/c it’s not considered particularly “important” unless it involves a white person…?
Yes, again that is why Asian Americans are not happy because unfortunately racism does exist in America and it permeates throughout our society and affects our personal experiences day to day. This is getting more and more personal but I think it’s important to add personal anecdotes and color to these discussions as a means of perspective, as I respect most members of this board and hope that by having a lively but respectful discussion we can all see each other’s points of view.
My wife is pregnant and neither of us are comfortable with her walking to the grocery store by herself due to asian american targeted violence in this country. I am born and raised in America and this is 2021 and I have to worry about carrying something around to protect myself and my family during the day solely on the basis of my skin color? I’ve never been what you would describe as “woke” person but clearly something isn’t right in our society.
Now back to the topic at hand, whether David’s post was directly racist or just denigrating of the Japanese culture, I guess everyone has to decide that on their own. You’ve voiced your opinion that you don’t feel its racist, which I respect. I personally don’t even know that if I feel that his post is directly racist, but what I know for my own self is that it’s not ok and should be called out especially here on FTC in a community where we clearly all are passionate about food. Does his race and the type of cuisine and the minority culture that it originates from factor into this specific discussion? IMO it definitely can’t be ignored, but others may disagree.
I think it’s more like if the Japanese chef of a French restaurant in Japan complained that other French restaurants weren’t serving pain au chocolat with dinner.
I think it’s more like if the Japanese chef of an acclaimed Chinese restaurant in Tokyo complained that other Chinese restaurants in Tokyo weren’t serving [the equivalent of Sakura Mochi in Chinese cuisine] with dinner.
I think some may say that French nationals and French-Japanese are not a historically marginalized class in Japan.
The problem with that analogy is that traditional Japanese and Chinese menus are similar as regards sweets. A meal might end with fruit or a thin, not-very-sweet soup. You buy mooncakes at a bakery and share them with your family.
The position of Japanese cuisine and restaurants in LA are similar to French cuisine and restaurants in Japan. They’re the opposite of marginalized.
That Japanese-Americans were historically marginalized certainly explains part of the antisocial media brouhhaha, but I think it’s more a response to Schlosser’s imported-from-contemporary-Japan aesthetic. (“My followers know that I’m about preserving Japan, it has nothing to do with Japanese Americans.”)
It’s akin to saying French and Italian desserts are similar. The lack of appreciation of the subtleties of a culture you have not grown up or fully ingrained is the point many posters are making. And glossing over these subtleties while being an arrogant pompous ass is what many find offensive.
How do you figure it’s incorrect? Neither Japanese nor Chinese menus traditionally conclude with pastries, ice cream or the like, the way French and American menus do. Both have traditional seasonal sweets not traditionally served at the end of a restaurant meal.
I believe Robert’s reference is about what types of “dessert” concludes a meal in Japanese or Chinese course progression AND both cultures having a distinctive category of sweets that do not necessarily get consumed at the conclusion of a meal. Not intended to mean that Japanese and Chinese confectionary are the same.
Chef Schlosser is assuming that Sakura Mochi should be a “dessert” course after a Japanese meal, and that’s a placement of a Japanese confectionary not necessarily intended for that purpose. More like a forced placement to fit the American expectations of a sweet dessert.
Case in point. You’re basically pulling a Schlosser move with your statement above.
I’m of Chinese descent and I’m telling you that Japanese and Chinese desserts are not similar. There are ingredients that are similarly used however the end product is distinct to each culture and even within the culture there are regional differences.
Schlosser’s original post “Sakura mochi is the most iconic dessert in Japan. Yet no Japanese restaurants are featuring it? So sad… It’s because these Japanese restaurants don’t understand, appreciate or care about promoting what Japanese cuisine is all about”.
Basically reads as - if you are serving any form of Japanese food and you are don’t offer sakura mochi in spring you don’t appreciate Japanese cuisine. Schlossers proclamation that his view is the definitive truth over an entire culture’s cuisine is what I find offensive. Just plain stupid and arrogant.
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