'Black History Month Is Not For Us'
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Pastry chef Simone Faure on cultural appropriation, false allyship and the misguided notion that Black History Month is for Black people.
In 2013, Simone Faure, a pastry chef from New Orleans, opened the James Beard-nominated La Patisserie Chouquette in St. Louis. She got her start going to culinary school in New Orleans and making kosher wedding cakes for The Ritz Carlton in New Orleans and St. Louis. Her schedule involves going to bed by 7 p.m. and getting up at 1 a.m. to start baking. In this edition of Voices In Food, Faure talks about cultural appropriation and how words like “allyship” are performative.
On Cultural Appropriation And Food
The idea that the people who came before us have laid out a path for us is fascinating to me. When it comes to food, I think it has the potential to heal a lot of wounds. It’s transformative when we stop taking input from the outside and we start listening to each other and realizing how much we all have in common. But we have these preconceived notions about people’s food like, “Oh, that’s odd. That’s weird. That’s gross.” Well, I’m from Louisiana, and we will eat anything that is moving. But people come from all over the world because they want to learn to cook that food. They want to work in those restaurants. They want to be diners in those restaurants. I was in Korea, and there was a Cajun restaurant. It said Cajun, and I was like, “OK, we have arrived.”
I’m a Black restaurant owner. I sell boba milk tea. I have never in my life tried to make it seem as if I invented boba milk tea or that anyone who looks like me invented boba milk tea. During the pandemic, I couldn’t frequent my favorite boba shops and I started making it at home for myself and then I started making it for my friends.
I did speak to some friends who are Asian and asked their opinion on it, and realistically, they don’t speak for the entire Asian community, but they knew where I was coming from with it. I simply wanted to offer something delicious that I loved with pastries. I think when it comes to cultural appropriation with food, a lot of times you’ll see things being bastardized and renamed in order to confiscate it almost, instead of giving homage to where that came from — that drives me absolutely crazy.
