A major hubbub broke out across the internet recently because a woman who goes by the name of Sushi Sheila opened a sushi restaurant in Manhattan.
Alex Marks, who is originally from Australia, left her job as a corporate lawyer to pursue her life’s dream of running a small business. Her small, take-out restaurant in the West Village, Sushi Counter, features Australian sushi—that’s uncut sushi rolls with ingredients (salmon, teriyaki chicken, avocado) that are not common in Japan.
Eric Rivera, a chef of Puerto Rican ancestry in Raleigh, North Carolina, who tweets or retweets more than 50 times a day, called her out on TikTok. White people should not make sushi, he said, calling her a “colonizer.”
“If you don’t see why this is a problem, you are the problem,” he said.
The internet supernovaed, first with people agreeing that she is brutishly appropriating another culture, and then with the inevitable backlash of support.
I am firmly on the side of the people who think she should not make sushi. But I don’t think they go far enough.
I am appalled, for instance, by the fact that people who are not German have the audacity to make hamburgers. Hamburgers, or at least the ground-beef part of hamburgers, were invented in Germany—in Hamburg, naturlich. They are part of a great and rich tradition that belongs to Germans alone.
Non-Germans who make hamburgers are guilty of nothing less than culinary cultural theft.
And the same goes for hot dogs. Hot dogs are claimed by both Germany (“frankfurters”, indicating they were invented in Frankfurt) and Austria (“wieners” from Wien, which is German for Vienna).
Of course, people who take a stance such as mine must be magnanimous at times. So I will graciously allow Germans and Austrians alike to sell hot dogs.
But no one else. Absolutely not. It would be an insult.
Italian food is popular around the world—including, significantly, in Japan. But every time we enjoy a dish of pasta or a succulent osso buco, it should be cooked only—only—by an Italian chef.
Unless, of course, it is made with a tomato sauce. Tomatoes are native to the Americas and should be used exclusively by cooks who are indigenous to this land. No exceptions.
So Italian food should be made by Italians without using tomato sauce. Or noodles. There is evidence to suggest that noodles were invented in China and only imported into Italy, where they were shamefully made by decidedly non-Asian cooks.
Still, that leaves pizza for Italian chefs, as long as it doesn’t have a red sauce. Or pineapple.
Soul food is a problem, but I think we can work around it. Obviously, only Blacks should make soul food. But the soul food that was originally made by southern Blacks is the exact same food that was also made by southern whites.
The obvious answer is that soul food and southern food can only be made by Blacks and whites, period. Unless people of other races who grew up in the south also want to make it.
See? There is always room for a small amount of compromise. If you’re going to make pronouncements about who in the world is allowed or not allowed to cook various foods, there is no need to sound foolish about it.
Only French people can use mayonnaise. Only Ethiopians can drink coffee. Only British people can eat baked beans on toast, or would want to. The rules are easy once you get the hang of it.
Sushi Counter is open and apparently thriving in New York. And what of Rivera, the chef who first objected with horror to the idea of someone who is not Japanese opening a Japanese restaurant?
He is planning to open a Puerto Rican-Japanese fusion restaurant in Raleigh.
