to come full circle, isn’t that exactly what Porridge & Puffs is doing? A(n arguably) far superior product to what ethnic enclaves are doing?
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Is it? I’ve never had it.
The chao at LXSO is incredible and worth the higher price. Obviously it can be done as the times I have been there, most customers were Asian, and many Vietnamese.
There’s the rub!
They actually are using truly exceptional ingredients that drive their costs up.
It’s not for me to say if their jook is objectively better than the cheap eats stalwarts in Koreatown and SGV.
However, P&P’s ingredients are definitely more expensive and their labor more intensive. Add in the insistence on paying a reasonable wage to employees while some low-priced eateries are paying below legal wages and it’s jot a surprise to see why P&P is much more expensive.
I definitely like it and would encourage you to give it a try. I think you’ll like it, too. From your posting history, I think you have exceptional taste!
(And while I think it goes too far to say that people who don’t want to pay more money for “ethnic” food are inherently racist, I think it’s fair to say that the culture of viewing “ethnic” food as something that need be cheap has roots in racism. So not the same thing, but something to think about.)
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I think it has roots in many things. One can be racism. Another can just be historic experience–people have tremendous price resistance to paying more than what they’re used to paying for things.
But another big one is, until relatively recently, there wasn’t a tremendous amount of interest in certain “ethnic” foods from people outside of those communities. So for years, people owning restaurants in lower-income communities had to price the food in a way that was affordable to members of those communities. That meant pricing things cheaply. So you also see people within those communities that grew up getting this stuff for cheap bristle when they see high prices for it.
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^^ a lot of this
Newport Seafood may have had live seafood tanks since the 80’s, but we only tapped into that when crab was like $3/lb or lobster @ $6/lb
I hear that. Good points, all around, and particularly relevant to people of “ethnicity” x resisting paying top dollar for high quality food from “ethnicity” x. And that’s what the main thrust was so I appreciate your post.
All that said, I believe in the food at P&P and I hope people on this board give them a try, at least. I think they are doing something special.
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I liked Always Be My Maybe, but the chef / restaurant parts were hilariously wrong. The night before opening her restaurant she went home early and made herself dinner? The day of the opening she went in after service had started, in a gown?
Except by the standards of risotto it’s overcooked, unservable glop. Call it what it is and ignore the ignorant.
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True but it was before that. Chez Panisse Cafe opened in 1981 and there were already a couple of high-end modern Italian places in SF.
I thought that was a dinner party. Are you talking about the mom?
I’m talking about Ali Wong’s character, the chef.
That is Always Be My Maybe. I thought we were talking about Crazy Rich Asians.
Uh …
The Jenny Dorsey Instagram post Sgee linked to was also talking about ABMM.
I have a bad habit of skimming when I read, sorry about that. 
Will make it a point to check her place out next trip back to LA.
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After years of reading these threads I’m finally going to weigh-in on this interesting subject. 
Why should she reposition her product? Is she going for the SGV seekers who are looking for traditional and cheap? Or is she trying to do something modern in her own neighborhood for people of her own generation who have expanded their palates beyond tradition?
…and buying cheap ingredients sometimes raised and grown in deplorable conditions.
This. I agree what Chef Minh said was wack. There was a better way for her to express her frustration. But this is an interesting (sometimes frustrating) dynamic. There is a lot of complaining that it’s racist for so-called ethnic food to always be pigeonholed as cheap eats. But when chef’s like Minh Phan try to step out of the mold some of the same people complain that it’s not traditional and too expensive. And it does usually tend to be folks within a chef’s own ethnicity. I can see the disappointment when it’s done as badly as Rice Box, but peeps seem to like P+P. Sooo?
It’s like we’re all complaining that people are ripping off Johnny Zone’s Nashville Hot Chicken. But nobody says that it’s not Johnny Zone’s to rip-off in the first place. He did what a lot of white chef’s do. He used his culinary pedigree, capitalized, upgraded and popularized to the masses. Not a peep about that one. Why? It’s been happening to Southern and African-American cuisine for so long some have forgotten (if they ever knew) the origin. I’m not mad at him. Chef Zone is such a great guy and the chicken is f-ing delicious, so we don’t think about it. But should we? What’s the answer here?
Now, there’s my two cents. 
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Whoa, entitlement? I think you better reword that last part.
As a chef and one that has worked in both old school Asian restaurants and modern restaurants you should know wage theft in rampant in both camps but especially Asian ones. It’s very common not to pay overtime, give proper breaks, have sick pay, or many other common employee rights.
Yes most of us don’t get into this industry to get rich but most of the modern operators want to do things the right and proper way in terms of running a business. If all the well known “cheap, high quality” restaurants in the SGV had to operate more legitimately then you would probably see every restaurant raise it’s prices by 20-30% if not more and that would probably put them not significantly cheaper than modern “hipster” restaurants that some tend to knock on them for their prices.
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Agreed. In my perspective, Chef Minh is challenging what she sees as the outcome of (perhaps unconscious) race bias. Hopefully the work she is doing–in the kitchen, in attempting to implement a economically sustainable/ethical business model, and for calling attention to stereotypes–will contribute to a shift where dining costs commensurate to the skill, sourcing, work, and costs of operating a business will be accepted across racial/cultural fault lines.
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I’m not saying she SHOULD reposition her product, but I get the reasoning behind the statement. For any place to be successful, there needs to be a large-enough intersection of people who want the food and people who are willing to pay for the food.
Right now, are there enough “non-SGV seekers” to make her product successful? Possibly not (I actually don’t know).
I think it’s safe to say that various aspects of Southern and African-American culture have been co-opted by the majority, and cuisine has included in that. The co-opting of Asian culture (cuisine included) is not something that the majority has shown as strong an inclination to do (IMHO). The distinct “otherness” of Asian cuisine might hurt its commercial viability for now unless it’s “repositioned” to something that’s less challenging and more accessible to the majority.
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