New NYC Chinese Restaurant Draws Swift Backlash to Racist Language [Updated]

A new fast-casual Chinese restaurant has been open for one day in Greenwich Village, and it’s already going viral for what some are calling racist positioning.

Lucky Lee’s comes from nutritionist Arielle Haspel, who tells Eater she created this restaurant with modified, “clean” Chinese-American recipes for “people who love to eat Chinese food and love the benefit that it will actually make them feel good.” She says she had many clients with dietary restrictions who couldn’t “indulge” in dishes like lo mein, fried rice, and kung pao chicken, so she developed gluten-, wheat-, refined sugar-, GMO-, and additive-free versions of them — or, as she says, she wanted to “healthify” them.

An Instagram post that was removed after Eater questioned Haspel about it read, “We heard you’re obsessed with lo mein but rarely eat it. You said it makes you feel bloated and icky the next day? Well, wait until you slurp up our HIGH lo mein. Not too oily. Or salty.”

Phrasing like that has drawn swift backlash on social media, with one person posting, “This white woman just opened a ‘clean’ Chinese food restaurant ... not only is she using Chinese food stereotypes/naming, she is shaming traditional Chinese food cooking with MSG/grease/starch.”

Haspel says she “steers away” from MSG “since [it] is something that people claim to have certain reactions to” — despite acknowledging there is no scientific evidence of this.

“There are very few American-Chinese places as mindful about the quality of ingredients as we are,” she says. “We’re excited to offer it to people who want this type of food, and it can make them feel good and they can workout after and they can feel focused after and it will add to their health.”

When asked if she thinks this positioning contributes to well-documented historically racist Chinese stereotypes, Haspel says she is “here to celebrate” Chinese-American food.

“I love love love American Chinese food. I made some tweaks so I would be able to eat it and my friends and other people would be able to eat it,” she says. “I am by all means never ever looking to put down a culture at all. I am very inclusive, and we’re here to celebrate the culture.”

She says they’re doing that by including “a lot of Chinese elements” like “lucky bamboo” and jade.

Haspel has supporters on Yelp and Twitter, but many disagree with her thinking: Lucky Lee’s Yelp page has already been flooded with negative reviews.

“Love to watch a Becky go bankrupt for racist appropriation,” one writes, while another says, “This restaurant uses racist tropes to position itself as better than a traditionally Chinese-owned restaurant for no good reason.”

In response to the backlash, the restaurant posted a defense of the concept and its positioning, writing that the owners “promise you to always listen and reflect accordingly.” The note again touted the food as “clean,” adding that, “When we talk about our food, we are not talking about other restaurants, we are only talking about Lucky Lee’s.”

Update: April 9, 2019, 12:20 p.m.: This article was updated to include the social media response from the restaurant.