Cultural Foods & Food Politics: Addressing my experience with @Jennywiththegoodeats

If you have been following my Instagram for the past few days, you may have seen the interactions between @jennywiththegoodeats and myself unfolding in real-time. I wanted to take this time to share all of the deleted comments, posts, and her now-private account for full transparency on how this contributes to the minimization of Asian American concerns — specifically Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans in this instance.

At first glance, you may wonder what’s the "big deal” with this post? It seems innocent enough. For context, this was posted Friday, the 26th and I saw/commented on her post on Sunday, the 28th which means she posted this 10 days after the Atlanta Shooting where Asian women were targeted and murdered.

It has been quite difficult seeing an influx of Asian “inspired” content all over social media (mainly for profit) and not an influx of Asian solidarity. Some of this is done subconsciously (mainly because they have the privilege to be subconscious about it) and some of this is done intentionally.

If you don’t understand how marketing, algorithms, SEO, or how anyone can monetize off of a “trending” (even though the attack had less that 48 hours of national coverage) trauma, please head over to Billy Green’s Instagram, where he details how YT Food Bloggers and Influencers have profited off of movements like this.

Read How SEO Perpetuates Cultural Appropriation & White Supremacy in Food Blogging here.

When I decided to comment on Jenny’s post, I did it through the lens to educate with a request to show solidarity. (With a quick scan of her social media presence of almost 10K followers, she had nothing up about solidarity for Asian people.)

My comment read: “It’s Vietnamese Spring Rolls or otherwise known as Gỏi cuốn. If you’re going to profit off of another culture’s food, the least you could do is use your platform to speak up for these communities. Between the mass shooting, huge increases in hate crimes, and the decline of support and sales in Asian restaurants due to racism, the least you could do is not take away any additional sales away from them.”

She essentially left me on read for more than 24 hours. She had liked a congratulatory comment that was posted after mine so I have reason to believe she intentionally ignored my comment.

I marked up the photo to show you the problem with this type of reinforcement:

“She works so damn hard and learns about other cultures and their food to share with our community and show them something new!”

• When did I imply she lacks work ethic in my original comment? Work ethic also has nothing to do with doing her due diligence. If you have access to her account and the food truck account she is associated with, not only do they call Spring Rolls, “Fresh Rolls”, they also call it “Salad Rolls” or #SaladRolls. I took more of a problem with her calling them Salad Rolls because no, they are not salad rolls and also why are you trying to make this sound like a brand new discovery when it’s not?

• The second part of this comment states “show them something new”. Show who something new? Other YT people? Because it’s definitely not new to Asian people. This is the problem with YT food influencers and bloggers who think they’re “discovering” something when in reality, they weren’t introduced. It’s not “new” just because you’re just now experiencing it.

“Sincerely a woman of color who knows your an ally”

• Where in my comment did I say she was not an ally? I never said that. My comment was a call-to-action to be a better ally.

After being ignored, my friend, Ashlee decided to comment as well calling her out for the unnecessary rebrand. Asian culture is heavily rooted in respect and rebranding something as your own, when it is not, is very disrespectful to our culture. And she gets a response from Jenny within minutes.

Please note Jenny immediately claims authenticity over the dish.

• This is common amongst White Culinary “experts” presenting as experts on Asian cuisine (honestly on all BIPOC cuisine as well).

You can read more about this issue in Digging into the Racial Politics of ‘Ugly Delicious’ by Rachel Kuo.Ugly Delicious is a show on Netflix that offers introductory conversations around the racial and cultural politics of food.

Please note Jenny is trying to credential her recipe as authentic because she got the recipe from a James Beard Awarding Winning Vietnamese Chef.

I am aware that recipes are recycled quite a bit amongst the culinary community but it is absolutely mind-boggling that, not only did she not specify this recipe was not her own, but she RE-BRANDED it — as if SHE MADE UP THIS DISH. So now this is an entirely different issue.

For context (and a quick social media scan), it is clear that @sondra.dishon is Jenny’s Sous Chef.

Here are the issues I took with her comments:

• “Sure doesn’t seem ‘rebranded’” — This is gaslighting. You don’t get to tell Vietnamese people how to feel about what you are doing to our culture and traditions and pretend you didn’t rebrand something when you clearly did. You can see the comment by @talielekelley was also ignored.

• “Food is a bridge that will connect us all, and I see homage being paid.” —This is dismissive, a fallacy, hypocrisy, and gaslighting. Once again, telling a Vietnamese person(s) that homage is being paid when we are expressing it is not.

• “What better way to do that than to make it and share it with others.” — I outlined better ways to do this with my very first comment that was clearly ignored and still being ignored.

• “Let’s spread positive vibes.” — This is toxic positivity. Positive vibes that enable people, who do harm to others, without holding them accountable do not resolve the issue. It gives them the room to double down on the harm; which this entire comment reinforces Jenny’s ability to continue to do harm because her friends are validating her.

From here, Jenny did the equivalence of “mansplaining”. She explains what it means to a chef — mind you, this is not a part of the conversation so I’m unsure how this explanation added value to the overall issue. She ends with saying she is “proud of the menu and stand by it.”

Sondra starts her comment of with tone policing. Tone policing is when you are more concerned with how an issue is presented rather than the issue itself. I went on to list some things they can do to show true advocacy. This includes but is not limited to:

• Listen to us & name the food by its proper name

• Show solidarity & denounce racism

• credit Andrea Nguyen

• Bonus Points (keyword bonus, since this will be used against me later):

  • If she is able to donate some of her proceeds from this dish to fight against Anti-Asian Racism

  • Highlight local AAPI restaurants that have been impacted negatively due to COVID & racism

Sondra responded to say “heard and understood” and I accepted it and was willing to patiently wait to see what their next steps would be.

Please note at this time, other Vietnamese commentators are still being ignored. This comment was one of the last comments left on Jenny’s post prior to her taking down the post entirely.

When I woke up in the morning to see all the dialogue erased, I was extremely upset. To me, this intentional decision to remove the post was to silence us and avoid dealing with this issue any further. So I decided to share all of these screenshots in my Instagram story.

If you prefer to watch the story in a video format, please visit my Instagram Highlight labeled as “Accountability”.

Jenny made zero comments for the whole day and the following day, this was the post that she posted.

This is what a performative / non-apology looks like. This screams “I’m sorry you are upset”. She easily could’ve addressed this caption: Hi, Thank you to XYZ for bringing this to my attention. I was unaware of how this came across but moving forward, I plan to do better.

And, it would’ve been accepted as we are here to hold you accountable but understand it takes time to learn and grow. But this caption does none of that.

Of course, seeing this, we called it out. Jenny never responded to any of us. In fact, if you want to see how deeply rooted these issues are, you can see it through the comments left by 3 BIPOC women (two who are Asian as well) defending Jenny.

This domino effect causes so much harm as it pits marginalized women against each other to protect Jenny’s whiteness, fragility, and inability to accept that she made many mistakes in handling this situation.

Imagine seeing another Asian woman, who has a “Stop Asian Hate'“ in her profile photo who is reinforcing the idea (and probably protecting her friend) that she is a “great person” as if that means she can’t ever make a mistake. She goes as far as to call my words “pretty hostile”.

If you know anything about the Asian woman stereotype, it is expecting us to be submissive and quiet OR “Dragon Lady”. There is no in-between. She finishes off her comment with tone policing accusing myself and other Vietnamese people of being “jerks” and explaining that’s why Jenny isn’t listening.

Below is the correspondence between Asian women: one was defending Jenny and the rest were defending our culture.

A generic copy & paste caption — performative at best.

Please note that Theresa’s comment was the only comment that Jenny ‘liked’ while she stayed silent during this entire exchange. I believe the reason why she ‘liked’ Theresa’s comment is because it allowed her to center herself and validate that this post was the “right” thing to post even though the rest of Theresa’s comment was outlining all of the other glaring issues.

Unfortunately, I am sensing a lot of internalized racism here with Eliza. She goes on about how we are verbally abusing Jenny and accusing us of rallying our friends against Jenny, and then criticizing us for critiquing a chef — as if chefs can’t make mistakes especially when she’s cooking food from a culture that is not hers that we were trying to ask her to correct.

Also, it’s hypocritical to say we were “rallying” against Jenny when Eliza, Sondra, and others were doing the exact same thing.

This interaction below shows how Jenny’s silence is pitting the marginalized community against each other. This implies we should be monoliths — which we are not. It is painful to see someone who is still experiencing racism is defending someone who can’t even hold herself accountable.

Jenny is then advised by her coworker to delete the post, reinforcing the idea that Jenny is not doing anything wrong, minimizing our entire experience, exhausting us of emotional labor, saying that we aren’t fighting the same “enemy”, and disregarding what we have asked to be what we deemed a proper remedy to the issue. (i.e. “I think it was best to remove the post, that way more people could not have been triggered and it would have made the healing process more difficult.” — She is reinforcing that Jenny did the right thing by deleting the original post then responding with a “Stop AAPI Hate” post; which if you didn’t see the first post, you would’ve assumed that Jenny, out of nowhere was showing solidarity out of nowhere.)

The bit that suggests we’re all doing this for “clout” is insanely insulting as well. The entire point of the erasure of Asian pain is the fact that we barely get coverage and here, a local chef / food influencer who preaches sustainability and accessibility with a platform of almost 10K followers, that is connected on and offline, is suggesting that we’re doing this for CLOUT.

You can see the interactions between all of us below.

Shortly after this, Jenny double down on the harm even further by taking her account private so that we can no longer hold her accountable.

If you made it this far, I want to let you know I really appreciate it. This has been exhausting to deal with and I have not seen an acceptable resolution to this issue.

What I would like to see happen:

I want an apology and accountability from Jenny publicly. I shouldn’t even have to hold her hand thru this and tell her how to apologize properly. I want people who are still friends with her on social media to either talk to her in-person and/or comment on her posts. I want you all to continue applying pressure until this is resolved.

At this moment, she has privated her accounted, deleted or archived the post, and also disabled comments. I would for her to unarchive the original post if she didn’t delete it.

For further clarification, this was NEVER about her being able to make, sell, or share the dish outside of her culture. This was a call to do the bare minimum IF she was to use our cultural dish for profit. Do not act like you “discovered” or rebrand the food. We are NOT props. Love us like you love our food.

If you want to further support, I encourage you to research anti-Asian history, from the Chinese Exclusion, Japanese American Internment Camps, to the bastardization of Asian food, the whitewashing and co-opting of Yoga, and so much more.

If you are looking to donate, we do have a few local chapters for Asian Americans here:

https://www.wm-aaa.org/

https://www.asiancommunitygr.org/

https://www.gofundme.com/f/stopasianhate-gr-asianpacific-foundation

Resources:

Question your understanding of “authentic” food

How SEO Perpetuates Cultural Appropriation & White Supremacy in Food Blogging by Billy Green

Digging into the Racial Politics of ‘Ugly Delicious’ by Rachel Kuo

Dear Food Bloggers, your “African Peanut Stew” recipes are PROBLEMATIC by Afia

Why can’t I just cook what I want and like? and other common sentiments in the food industry examined: Part 1 by Chef Jenny Dorsey

PS: I did want to address how her Instagram handle can be viewed as problematic.

Her IG Handle is “Jenny with the Good Eats” which a play on “Becky with the Good Hair” from Beyonce’s song “Sorry” off of the Lemonade album.

At a glance, Beyonce tells her husband he better call the woman that he cheated on her with, referring to her as “Becky with the good hair”.

If you dig deeper, you will understand that this is also a call out on the disparities on beauty standards between Black Women and White beauty standards. (i.e. White features are deemed beautiful, professional, and ect. When white women appropriate black features, it’s deemed worthy, trendy, hip - you can see examples of this on Kim Kardashian and her sisters calling corn rows: “boxer braids”).

So why would you want to play on disparities when your philosophy is about sustainability and accessibility but your food is not accessible. Why would you want to reference yourself in the same line as “the other woman”. I assume this was a subconscious marketing decision and she may have thought it was cute, trendy, and cool.

Update w/ Roll Call Food Truck

Originally, I was not going to address Roll Call Food Truck since they were a client of Jenny’s so I felt like the accountability would still be on Jenny’s end. From my understanding, Jenny’s spring roll post was about a menu she created for Roll Call.

However, after I noticed she had liked all of Jenny’s comments that were doubling down on the harm towards our experience, I paid attention to what they were posting on their socials for the next few days. I noticed they had not made any solidarity statement but posted another Spring Roll “inspired” roll called a Rainbow Row.

At a quick glance, there’s really nothing wrong with this post. But given the context, we were under the impression that these items were being rebranded even though we were told this menu was “authentic”. Now, there’s nothing wrong with presenting an item as fusion. The main issue was appropriating cultural foods and not doing the bare minimum to show any sort of solidarity.

You can see a few commenters applying pressure to Roll Call for some explanation about their menu items where they go on to explain they are “showing appreciation” when we had already pointed out this is appropriation. They also were tone policing. After going back and forth for a bit and asking for a little credit to be paid to the culture, she minimizes the issue for empathy on her part since she’s a one-woman show.

This resulted in her removing all rice paper and “Vietnamese Ingredients” off the menu. I want to be clear this is not what we are asking. We are not saying you cannot cook or sell spring rolls. We are asking for proper credit, respect, and solidarity.

Update w/ Jenny & Sondra

For full transparency, I would like to document that both Jenny & Sondra reached out to me on April 2nd (5 days after the initial interactions). I did leave both messages on read for about a week going back and forth on trying to decide if I would want to respond or not since this experience has been draining and I did not think it is my responsibility to educate people how not to harm the AAPI community. In fact, I think I did a lot of education for free already through this entire process.

After a week, I decided the person I wanted to respond to was Sondra. At this point, Jenny’s profile was still private. I will share the correspondence between Sondra and me below:

Whether it was a coincidence or not, Jenny released an apology later that same day. I can’t help but think my conversation with Sondra pushed Jenny to put out a public apology. While there are things on Jenny’s apology I would like to critique, I am trying to give her the space to learn and grow. I understand no one is perfect so it is best in situations at this point is to allow people to have the space to try and grow on their own.

I’m not sure when if there will be a time I will be willing to sit down with Jenny just yet. But, if and when that time comes, I will let you all know.