Celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay hits back in defence of new Lucky Cat Asian restaurant in cultural appropriation row
- Food writer Angela Hui slammed the eatery after event, says she was the ‘only east Asian person in a room full of 30-40 journalists and chefs’
Gordon Ramsay has hit back against accusations of cultural appropriation at his new “authentic Asian” restaurant after an east Asian food writer described it as “a real life Ramsay kitchen nightmare”.
In a review of a preview event for Lucky Cat this week, the food writer Angela Hui said that she was “the only east Asian person in a room full of 30-40 journalists and chefs”.
In accompanying screengrabs of posts to Instagram, she said she could only “drink through the pain that this is an ‘Asian’ event” and characterised the restaurant’s approach as “Japanese? Chinese? It’s all Asian, who cares.”
At the event, according to Hui, Ramsay said the head chef, Ben Orpwood, was “way more qualified and experienced than me in this field” by dint of having researched and travelled to South Asia for “many months”.
In response Ramsay said that “despite the very positive feedback from guests” there was “one offensive response from the night, which I have to call out”. He accused Hui of being derogatory and offensive, saying she lacked professionalism and integrity. He said that one post on Hui’s feed referred to Orpwood’s wife as a “token Asian wife” and was “personal and hugely disrespectful”.