When I hear the name “Benny Chows,” I assume that there’s a guy named Benny Chow (or something close to that) who was involved in the restaurant at some point. When it turns out the Benny in question isn’t Asian at all, it feels a bit like I’ve been misled. And since I’ve been misled specifically into thinking Benny was Asian, it feels a bit like yellowface.
Not something I’d go protest or organize a boycott over, but probably something that would make me skip this place if I was in Houston and looking for a restaurant.
It can. Plenty of places in the Houston area like that.
If you’re more interested in the food part than the experience, there is no shortage of incredibly good, relatively inexpensive places all over town covering an incredible array of ethnic cuisines.
A recent example that’s really developed over the last ~15 years or so are Vietnamese-Cajun crawfish places. There was already a large Vietnamese population from the war ~50 years ago and that got a big boost via transplants from Katrina to form some incredibly good food.
As for ‘elevated’, there are plenty of American-Chinese places in town that aren’t hole in the wall, with tablecloths, good service, etc but also aren’t ‘elevated’. They don’t have mixologists developing new cocktails or anything like that, though.
This place is deliberately aiming for a bit of pretension, which matches the increasingly gentrified neighborhood where it’s located. To be fair, that matches his other restaurants, which do offer good food but there’s more than a little hipster involved as well.
In South Africa we have “Bunny Chow”, an entirety different dish. A quarter loaf of bread is hollowed out, leaving about 2cm on each side. The hollow is filled with curry, usually lamb or chicken, but also vegetarian, and the piece removed from the bread placed on top. You use the top piece to mop up the juices. The design of the thing was to give laborers an easy, cutlery free meal.
I am fairly sure “chow” came from China via India (British slang), but lost all meaning along the way, for us “chow” means food, or “to eat” albeit in South African slang…
It’s popularity is big on the east coast. Unfortunately- because I love them, less so in the mid south coast where I live.
I think the dispute is pretty stupid, but in today’s climate, I can clearly see it as a name someone is going to be (or claim to be) offended by. And that is probably sufficient reason to avoid the name.
Whether I think it is a good/clever/grammatically correct name or not is a different question.
So, I am a white American with a Polish last name. If I wanted to open an Italian/Greek/Soul Food restaurant, I couldn’t call it Antonio’s/Zeus’/Mama’s? Or, if I want to open a restaurant, am I relegated to serving pierogi and/or burgers?
I have to agree with those who’ve said that the only ones “offended” by this restaurant name are those making a real extra effort to be offended. The name is intended to convey the idea that the menu is Chinese, that’s all. There is (or was) a Chinese takeout chain around here called Ho Lee Chow. The name was obviously silly pretend-Chinese. I don’t know of anyone who was “offended”, nor do I think they would have felt misled if not a single Asian was working in the place. It’s not the kind of name that suggests authenticity.
As for the problematic grammar in “Benny Chows”, it’s a restaurant name, not a dissertation. It doesn’t need to follow rules of grammar.
Once I was invited to a (Taiwanese?? Szechuanese??) restaurant in I think Oakland with a cutesy name like “3 Spicy Sisters” (辣妹子). No idea if a single Asian was working in the place or whether there were any female siblings or other girls in the picture, but the food was in fact quite reasonably spicy, so there you go for truth in advertising.
Well, Ho-Lee-Chow (apparently spelled with hyphens – my bad), which was neither holy nor really Chinese – once described as “a ubiquitous purveyor of pseudo-Chinese food” – went out of business in 2009, for the record. But they did hang around for 20 years, offending no one except maybe those seeking authentic Chinese food (whatever that may mean).
I consider our local Chinese takeout – owned and operated by the appropriately correct Asians – to be pretty authentic, although I’ve never been to China and have no objective basis on which to judge. I base my judgment on the fact that you have to be careful and knowledgeable about what you order, because while some things are absolutely delicious, others are definitely not to North American tastes, to put it diplomatically.
Why be so irritated by elevated? It’s a euphemism for ‘expensive’. It’s marketing bullshit. It’s everywhere. I’ll translate. He wants to sell food to people with more disposable income than average. He’s going to stack it vertically on a strangely shaped plate in a nicely adorned establishment. It’ll cost 3x more than you’re used to paying. It’s elevated. You’ll love it.
“Elevated” became problematic because it was used primarily to describe white chefs ”elevating” non-white cuisine. There was a lot of food writing around 2018 about it. As is the case with race related things, many people think that is okay. And many do not.
I must not have been paying close enough attention. I’ve heard the term used for all kinds of cuisine, not just those of non-European origin. Elevated burger and fries, elevated bacon and eggs, elevated fish and chips, and such, along with elevated nachos, elevated sushi, or elevated chicken fried rice. Of course my main source of information is shows on the Food Network such as Chopped or Iron Chef.
Yeah, if you watch a lot of cooking competition shows you’ll hear it all the time. It’s a common competition challenge: “I want you to make me a [insert common dish], but elevated.” It sounds like it means something, but it’s just vague enough it could mean almost anything. It usually means just make a good-tasting version of that dish, with some fancy toppings on it, but don’t color too far outside of the lines, and make it look pretty on the plate. There’s almost always a fried egg on top.
When I went to college, there was a walk up Chinese food place called “Chinese Takee Outee”. It seemed amusing at the time (late ‘90s). Now, I have little doubt that it would be considered controversial.
How about looking at it like this. In the context of this thread, “elevated” was used to describe the cooking of a white chef making Chinese food. This is materially different than describing the elevation of a specific dish of humble origin.
Kind of like how you can describe objects as Oriental, but not people. So how about elevating dishes but not a cuisine. Because that’s kind of a shitty thing to do.
I mean, you could say a Chinese chef elevates Cantonese cuisine [to a new level of tastiness, never before seen!]. I see it as a synonym for refined, no baggage at all from racist imperialistic notions of ‘elevating’ savage cultures to civilized standards.
You can’t? That’s new… I guess? I mean I know as a noun, but as a descriptive adjective?
Well, now that I think about it, there are more people living in China than the entire western hemisphere combined. And “Asian” usually includes the whole sinosphere, if not also India which also has more people than the entire western hemisphere combined. Kind of weird if you think about some dude in China wanting to eat “American” cuisine, and mentally lumping together the entire of North and South America.
