The Bobster
Senior News Editor since 2004
Haters try to bring down Aussie-style sushi restaurant in NYC — because the owner is white
There’s no oppressor quite like a white immigrant woman selling sushi.
nypost.com
Haters try to bring down Aussie-style sushi restaurant in NYC — because the owner is white
By
Kirsten Fleming
Published Oct. 26, 2023, 7:55 a.m. ET
There’s no oppressor quite like a white immigrant woman selling sushi.
At least that’s how Eric Rivera, a North Carolina based chef and perpetual victim, views the world.
After seeing that a blonde Australian woman, Alex Marks, recently opened Sushi Counter — a West Village take-out spot serving “Aussie-style sushi” — he launched an online bullying campaign from his recliner, a whopping 500 miles away.
10 Alex Marks, a white woman from Australian, was accused of being a “colonizer” for opening an Australian-style sushi restaurant in Manhattan.Tamara Beckwith/NY POST
Marks’ sin? Selling sushi while white. Her penance? Total online annihilation — and, if trolls had their way, shutting down her business.
On Friday, Rivera, whose parents hailed from Puerto Rico, nobly took to X, where he has 15,000 followers, to share and mock a TikTok video of Marks explaining her journey from corporate lawyer to sushi purveyor.
He then deployed the woke nuclear bomb, calling her a “colonizer.”
10 North Carolina based Chef Eric Rivera tried to cancel Alex Marks because she opened an Australian style sushi spot in the West Village.
@dumbbitchcap/X
10 Sushi Counter opened in the West Village a few weeks ago and was hit by online trolls calling owner Alex Marks a “colonizer.”Tamara Beckwith/NY POST
His salvo unleashed the largest cultural appropriation food fight since 2017 — when two white women, who learned the art of tortilla making in Mexico, shuttered their Portland, Oregon, burrito stand after receiving death threats.
“But it’s ‘stralian sushi. Give me a break colonizer,” Rivera snarkily posted, adding: “If you don’t see why this is a problem, you are the problem.”
On cue, the aggrieved keyboard warriors of social justice flooded Google with nasty one-star reviews of Sushi Counter. The online harassment got so intense, that Marks wiped her TikTok clean.
Others piled on with ignorant drivel, using all those meaningless buzzwords plucked from the viral glossary of intersectionality.
10 Rivera (left), whose parents are from Puerto Rico, is a chef himself.@ericriveracooks/Instagram
Marks’ “audacity” struck fear in the hearts of Rivera’s online disciples, with one X user called Queer Latifah writing, “The contradiction & cognitive dissonance is maddening. [Marks] feels she can’t ‘afford’ decent sushi in NYC, a place that has one of the largest & vastly diverse Asian populations? So instead, she finances her own sushi spot. Colonization is white & quite scary to see in real time.”
According to the logic of Rivera and his rabid fans, one must take a 23andMe test before they’re allowed access to certain sections of the spice rack.
10 Eric Rivera’s tirade on X, where he called Marks a “colonizer.” @dumbbitchcap/X
And what a sad, ahistorical way to view the world. The very bedrock of our American experience can be summed up as one big cultural appropriation — from fashion to food to music and art. Everything is borrowed. Ideas spread, they circulate and people innovate. Appropriation is, ultimately, appreciation. The grease that keeps our collective engine humming.
To apply Rivera & Co.’s retrograde, stick-to-your-own segregation is to punish innovation — and dilute the hearty, infinitely interesting stock that fills this melting pot we call America. It would also deny us grub like Tex-Mex, nearly every style of pizza, and Chinese restaurant favorites like General Tso’s chicken and beef and broccoli — cuisine that has strayed from its earliest formulas and ethnic originators.
10 An X user who goes by Queer Latifah blasted Alex Marks, adding that “Colonization is white and scary to see in real time.”@dumbbitchcap/X
From the fevered moral panic, one could assume that Marks, by brute force, threw a Japanese family out of their storefront, stole their materials, money, and method, and slapped her own flag on the place.
Nope, she merely introduced a staple from her homeland that she couldn’t find in NYC. As an Aussie friend of Marks’ told me, her sushi is not meant to be to compete with what you get at an omakase. “It’s based off the on-the-go sushi counters in Australian shopping centers that are pretty basic but so popular at home,” the friend said.
This particular style is served as uncut hand rolls and sometimes stuffed with cooked tuna or chicken teriyaki. They have their own singular spin on Asian cuisine Down Under, not that the naysayers, with their willful ignorance, took the time to learn.
10 The sushi rolls sold at Sushi Counter are uncut and styled on popular takeaway food in Australia.Tamara Beckwith/NY POST
10 An Instagram user takes a bite out of a Sushi Counter hand roll while posing with Alex Marks. @darovi_79/Instagram
Marks, in her video, chronicled the process of whipping her quaint shop — a DIY collaboration with friends — into shape. Painting, moving furniture, sourcing materials. Turning a blank page into something tangible.
She put in hard work, pluck and grit — things that should still be held sacred.
Rivera, meanwhile, is a flawed evangelist for this segregationist food movement. Earlier in the year, he announced his own plans to open a Puerto Rican-Japanese fusion restaurant in Raleigh, NC. And according to his Instagram page, he sells his own homemade pasta. Mamma mia! Have you no dignity? That’s only for Italians, buddy.
10 Despite Eric Rivera’s stance on cultural appropriation, X users called out that he too had plans to open a restaurant with a Japanese bent.@dumbbitchcap/X
Fusion and appropriation for me, not for thee.
Rivera, who once owned a restaurant in Seattle, announced in March that he was offering a pop-up culinary experience starting at $750. In comparison, “gentrifier” Marks, as she was called, sells three rolls for $12 — affordable and accessible.
But lunatics who tried to sink Marks don’t want a system that rewards hard work and good ideas. They want to flatten everything — tear it down and rewrite the rules — so they are left holding the wooden spoon and all the power. They want to subjugate with their silly and empty insults like “colonizer.”
10 After some social media users turned on Marks, others came to her rescue — helping boost Sushi Counter’s ratings on Google after trolls lowered them.@dumbbitchcap/X
There is hope, however. Shortly after Rivera’s campaign, word began spreading on social media and a funny thing happened. People began standing up for Marks and got her shop’s review average up to 4.5 stars on Google.
Rivera made his account private. So did Queer Latifah.
And Sushi Counter? They’re still open, serving up cheap and cheerful sushi rolls. Maybe a touch of sanity is returning.