This is another Eater article in regards to the moldy sitch written by Jaya Saxena.
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How else are marginalized peoples supposed to speak out about gentrification and oppression? You’re ignoring basically the entire history of the United States.
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False comparison and the article wouldn’t be written but not because of the reasons you think. How often does a community of color be gentrified by another community of color where prices are driven up and old business couldn’t compete due to rents exploding?
If Asian was substituted in that article, it would be a head scratcher.
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I give you Koreatown as exhibit A.
If you’re comparing K-Town to how working class communities have been gentrified and people of color have been driven out due to high rents and proliferation of businesses selling expensive products that they can’t afford, then we can’t even hold a conversation.
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Koreatown I would say has been far more gentrified than Virgil Village. Just look at all the fancy apartments that have gone up in the past 10 years. A tiny 1 bed apartment rents for over $3k in ktown. I’m sure those are meant for the Latino community that have lived in that neighborhood for the past 50 years.
Tired of crucifyjng all white people for the sake of social justice. Such a hypocritical double standard. And this is coming from “a POC.”
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But it’s not just the Second Gen Korean Community that is driving up those rents. Those rents are going up because of the extension of the Purple Line and a lot of younger folks being driven out the Westside and DTLA/Arts looking for apartments with central location. The Luxury Apartment boom is relatively a new things to K-Town. I am there fairly often still… and the H-Mart and other locals are catering to these transplants that are landing in K-Town… which oh by the way…happen to be white.
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Since it seems like this was an open secret from “those in the know,” is there a reason why no one spoke out against her earlier? For her to suppress the people who helped her to gain such success is just disgusting.
Or perhaps people did speak out against her, and it just didn’t get much press… 
Pretty damning. Starting the (deserved) SQIRL death watch… Such a shame b/c I really liked Onda. But there’s no way in hell I’m supporting Kaslow’s ventures anymore…
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For her to say the jam mold is the same thing as healthy molds on cheeses/aged meat is absolutely ludicrous. She is either straight up lying and hoping people don’t know/read up on the differences,
or she’s obliviously stupid, either way she shouldn’t be in charge of such an operation.
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That response was most definitely reviewed by her counsel. It was carefully milled over.
My conspiracy theory: Feigning ignorance. “Oh, Jessica thought the mold was the same as on the mold on cheese/charcuterie.”
Not a lawyer, but this may limit her legal liability re: negligence?
From a PR perspective, it would limit her moral liability. She is just stupid, not evil.
It is extremely common for people to be afraid of speaking out especially when there’s a power imbalance. It’s too easy to be labeled as a troublemaker, etc and be blackballed from the industry. When others above you have the connections and public profile and you have none of that, the dangers of speaking out and no longer being able to be successful in your industry is very real.
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also, the issues of recipes/credit between sous and chefs are a tricky one. courts don’t recognize recipes as copy right and you can just change one or two things and call it yours. some recipes are collaborative. but the difference is that some chefs uplift and respect while some choose to erase or ignore. Case in point: White chef takes POC recipe: Andy Ricker’s famous chicken wing recipe in his cook book is called Ike’s Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings and the headnote goes into his sous chef creating the dish.
He could have easily claimed that dish and no one would know and his unknown sous could have screamed to the heavens and probably not be heard.
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Kinda not surprised that this is the case with Sqirl. I am a recovering Sqirl evangelist. I used to go a few times a week. It is still hard to argue with how good some of the dishes are there.
There was always a weird colonial vibe to the place. The longer I went the more apparent it became. From the neighborhood it was in, to the way they handled the local homeless population trying to buy food, to the recipes…stuff had a way of feeling off.
I stopped going when I tried a porridge dish that was essentially an overpriced/renamed rendition of Haleem. It was not so much the price that bothered me but the fact that it wasn’t acknowledged that the dish has existed in other cultures for centuries. Reading what the former chefs are saying about the attitude of credit giving/taking there makes me feel a little better about my hunch to stop going.
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There are definitely arguments against the one put forward in the article (mainly, that it is essentially telling the people who actually live there that they themselves must be ok with their own property values not increasing and keeping their options for employment within their neighborhood limited to what they are right now, not unlike people complaining about how a given tourist destination is “ruined” by its people turning to more lucrative service jobs than continuing in the backbreaking labor they had been doing before), but “Koreatown is getting gentrified too” isn’t a particularly compelling argument to me. I think you’re trying to jump to a point where the city has really wrestled with the complicated dynamics of gentrification, and we’re just not even close to there yet.
And, as a white person, being “crucified” on a website for the sake of social justice doesn’t actually hurt me at all, whereas people who potentially get displaced from their homes as a result of my financially/educationally/racially privileged friends all getting avocado toast at a new restaurant and thus bringing the attention of developers who use their own privilege and contacts to build homes there that nobody who lives in the area can afford, thereby attracting more avocado toast outposts and more developers etc. really does do actual harm to people.
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Yes, I certainly get that. I think the reason I asked was more b/c I was just so infuriated at reading how Kaslow has apparently been pushing down people for years. It’s horrifying. I think the current local/national/global environment, while chaotic and scary in many ways, is also empowering people to speak out all sorts of things, and I’m glad this stuff is coming to light.
Hadn’t known that. I can imagine that would also add to people’s fear of speaking out.
Yes, and I think this is the difference btw inspiration and appropriation, IMHO.
When she wrote, “if you are in community w/ us…,” I just gave up. So weird and cult-y.
Gawd, this is all just so sad and disappointing.
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It’s also crazy how, if the allegations are true, customers have been scarfing down moldy jam toasts since 2012 and nobody knew about it until 8 damn years later!
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Your ktown analogy is a rough example of whataboutism. It distracts from an important conversation about equity at Sqirl, their relationship with the Virgil Village community, and egregious food safety violations.
All white people are not being crucified. We’ve seen the tiniest amount of accountability/justice for those who continue to perpetuate systems of oppression. If the needs of those fighting for social justice are somehow outweighed by the white “victims” in your narrative, I encourage you to reassess the reality of who is really being hurt.
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This all makes me even more curious about the early departure of Gabriela Cámara from Onda.
Did she see Koslow’s MO and nope out?
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This is what creeps me out. It’s so possible for so many people to get ill from this…the cooks and restaurant employees who had to deal with the product and the circumspect room it was made and stored in and the customers who ate anything with jam on it.
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