“Authentic” Dining in New York City
In New York City, various Yelp reviews that operate as measures of “authenticity” have put non-white restaurant owners in a bind. Sara Kay, a master’s student in Food Studies at New York University, conducted research on the concept of “authentic” when applied to food reviews and found that the term often supports white supremacism. In an analysis of the Yelp reviews, she concluded that the majority of responses favored the white, Eurocentric dining experience, and discredited restaurants in which the facilities were not immaculate and the workers non-white. In the context of dining reviews in New York City, the word authenticity is counterintuitive, for it reinforces harmful stereotypes by praising specific, western dining experiences by marking them as “correct”.
Following Jean-Pierre Warnier’s article, “The Moral Economy of Authenticity and the Invention of Traditions in Franche-Comte (France)”, he acknowledges institutions and procedures of authentication in northeastern France. The global rationale for the quest for authenticity lies in the need to domesticate foreign things and people by assigning them to a tradition, heritage, and locality. In the context of the article, Yelp reviewers negatively review restaurants that fail to align with their westernized, white vision of how non-western restaurants should operate. In turn, these non-western establishments receive low ratings which hurts their businesses.
https://ny.eater.com/2019/1/18/18183973/authenticity-yelp-reviews-white-supremacy-trap
Reference:
Warnier, J. P. (2013). The moral economy of authenticity and the invention of traditions in Franche-Comté (France). Debating Authenticity: Concepts of modernity in anthropological perspective, 78-90.
Contributed by KatherineDeSilva on 10/02/2019
