During Michaelmas, I went to London one day attempting to visit an Asian fusion restaurant that had already made the rounds on the Internet. As a foodie, I, of course, am no stranger to viral restaurants. I knew that there was a high likelihood that, without a reservation, I would have to wait. I had done my best to mitigate that by strategically timing my arrival for an off-peak dining hour. Still, upon arriving, I was told that I couldn’t dine there. According to the hostess, there wasn’t any space for me, a party of one, for the rest of that day.
“What about the bar?” I asked. In my experience, bar seating was usually more flexible for walk-ins. The hostess looked me up and down – a bit nastily, if I do say so myself – and simply responded that if I really wanted to, I could try waiting, but it’d be at least over an hour and it was only on the off chance someone vacated the bar. Based on the coldness of that interaction, I decided to leave. I was puzzled. In my mind, it wasn’t like everyone who dined at the bar would stay there until closing time. Perhaps she meant that the bar was already fully booked with reservations. Yet I was sure that wasn’t the case because she had given the option of waiting until someone left, which had to mean there was walk-in availability.
I shuffled to a nearby food stand and sat on a bench with the hot dog I’d decided to get instead, running through that encounter repeatedly in my mind. Then, I came to the conclusion: the hostess simply didn’t want me to dine there. If she had, she would have had a more respectful tone. Maybe she would have even offered upcoming reservation availability, even if it was weeks later. Glumly, I chewed on my hot dog and stared at my puffer jacket. I should have taken it off, I thought to myself. I was wearing something more presentable underneath – everyone in the restaurant seemed to be wearing dressy outfits. I hadn’t thought about my puffer at all, simply consumed with the excitement of potentially getting to eat at that restaurant.
I’m not criticising the restaurant itself. In fact, sad as it might sound, I still want to eat there, even if I’ll later find it to be as overrated as many other viral restaurants. I’m a sucker for how their food looks on Instagram. Thus, I don’t think I’ll be able to get it out of my mind. I’m more so criticising the nature of that interaction and how it reminded me of the “lunchbox moment,” a concept with lasting implications that I’ve previously written about. The “lunchbox moment” forms a large part of cultural narratives about Asian diasporic identity, and typically refers to the moment an Asian child is told that the Asian food they brought for lunch is disgusting or uncool. There’s also the accompanying narrative Jaya Saxena describes as realising “your cuisine has become ‘trendy.’”
In the context of those narratives and my own experience, it’s clear that a version of Asian food has now become a symbol of high-end exclusivity. It’s become a sort of status symbol to secure a place at these viral, highly-coveted Asian fusion restaurants,whereas in the Asian restaurants I grew up with, any paying customer was welcome.
It’s the same idea with matcha lattes. Before their popularity, I used to drink matcha lattes every day, only to be met with derision and the ever-famous statement “matcha tastes like grass.” Now, digital culture and the concept of virality has infiltrated that space. Every video I scroll through on social media is promoting a new, innovative kind of matcha latte: a persimmon matcha latte, a chocolate cream top matcha latte or an espresso-infused matcha latte where you can also add charcoal or collagen powder. I go to these places as a decade-long matcha fan and end up waiting four hours in line to try the same drink I used to get ridiculed for. Now, there’s a global matcha shortage.
(Also: because we don’t gatekeep in this household, let me just say that NEPA Coffee and Food on St Clement’s has the best, highest quality-tasting matcha I’ve had in Oxford to date.)
On the one hand, I appreciate how matcha and Asian food are finally getting their dues. I’m an Asian American foodie studying Internet culture, and I absolutely love how many Asian businesses are thriving because of the videos that I see on my feed. I especially love the discourse of matcha lattes being the iconic drink of choice for the “performative male,”
I can’t deny that, because of my Asian American identity, I also love how many restaurants serving Asian fusion are an homage to cross-cultural innovation. One common practice is blending Asian food staples with more “Western” takes and concepts. Dirty Bones, over at our very own Westgate, has “cheeseburger gyozas,” which I sometimes feel like is the perfect representation of the broader diasporic experience.
On the other hand – and I know it might sound bitter of me – I occasionally wonder if the popularity of Asian restaurants and matcha lattes has become a form of gatekeeping. I can’t help the feeling that I’m being priced out of what I grew up eating and drinking, sometimes both financially and socially. Oftentimes what goes viral on Instagram is the most aesthetic, the dish with the most presentation. It’s a little bit of actual food and a whole lot of embellishment. I recently tried an upscale Asian restaurant where almost every item on the menu was valued at twenty pounds, if not more. The original iteration of one of those dishes, braised pork belly rice, would be less than three pounds in Taiwan.
Not to mention that, in addition to the one experience in London (which I would say has been the worst in terms of service), I’ve had so many experiences going to “high-end” Asian fusion restaurants and feeling like I wasn’t welcome in those spaces. I can’t help but think that going to these restaurants now necessitates a certain kind of performance: I need to be an “upscale,” glamorous, influencer-adjacent Asian American in order to be respected as a diner with real value for the business. I would love to be like that, but I’m just a university student wearing a puffer coat in this freezing weather craving some good food and a little taste of home.
What I’m saying is that I have a lot of complex feelings about how the Asian food and drink scene has evolved over the past few years, especially in this digital age. Sometimes I stand in line for a viral matcha latte for two hours and want to march up to the staff and tell them that before, it wasn’t like this at all. Then I remember: in one of my university application essays, I once wrote about my love of sharing food. In this day and age, sharing food doesn’t just mean physically breaking apart food for others. It means influencers posting about food online – “sharing” food in the Internet sense with a global audience.
To me as a consumer, sharing food is about being open to as many people tasting it as possible in whatever form is most “palatable” to them, whether it’s gone viral or not. There’s a gut feeling I have that the people who regularly spend half a day waiting for Asian food or a matcha latte are the people I’d hang out with for the rest of my life.