You won’t believe why this Seattle restaurant is under attack

Eric Donnelly is the chef and owner of Rock Creek, a restaurant in the Fremont neighborhood, and his hip-hop-themed menu is making at least one activist/journalist at The Stranger angry.

The menu for the hip-hop brunch includes menu items inspired by or named after hip-hop artists and songs, like the NWA (it’s not just a rap group, it’s now pancakes with Nutella, walnuts, and crème anglaise), or the Biggie Smalls (a short stack with braised bacon and sunny-side up eggs). Seems cute and harmless until you view it through an extremist ideological lens.

Angela Garbes at The Stranger is not happy.

A very humorless Garbes writes, in part, “At a time when many black businesses are struggling to hang on, and black youth are being killed for being black, it’s painful to see white-owned businesses try and make money off of black culture.”

A couple quick asides: Her false claim of “black youth” being “killed for being black” refers to the shooting of Michael Brown, who tried to kill Officer Darren Wilson. Also, The Stranger is published by Tim Keck, who isn’t black. I guess Garbes is helping this non-black owned business make money off of black issues.

Garbes criticism is, of course, off base and ridiculous. And luckily, it seems, she holds a minority opinion.

In an interview on the Jason Rantz Show, Chef Donnelly said the vast majority of customers “have been so excited about it.” He criticized The Stranger, claiming “they’re really trying to pin me as some kind of racist or somebody trying to profiteer from the black community in some kind of way, which is so backwards because I feel like hip-hop is not only stemmed from the black community, but represented by every community and is all over the globe.”

Yet Garbes, speaking of the menu items, complains, “these hip-hop names were born out of real political frustration in the black community in the 1980s over things like racial profiling and police brutality” problems that continue today. It’s a privilege to be detached enough from these meanings to repurpose them for a brunch menu.”

But Chef Donnelly says the hip-hop brunch is a positive thing. “This is actually a celebration of struggle,” he told the show. “[It’s] a celebration of rap and hip-hop music and hip-hop culture in a different way.”

Of course, being the brunt of ideologically driven, misinformed, hypersensitive criticism, Chef Donnelly had this to say to Garbes: “I just think it’s really unfortunate that The Stranger would even allow their writer … to put something out like this. It’s clear and transparent that she’s trying to stir the pot and turn this into a racial issue. I would say shame on The Stranger for even trying to attempt something like this.”

Well said.

I do, however, fault Chef Donnelly for not knowing that this is what The Stranger does. They look for things to be unhappy about. So many of their writers are arrogant extremists who view everything through ideological lenses (even brunch menus!!), and it’s their type of angry, humorless rhetoric and attacks that really make Seattle a hard place to live sometimes because too often, it’s their unpopular view that is louder than the sane majority.

They’re offended by everything they disagree with because they’re angry at a world that doesn’t exist the way they want it to. And for people who are always offended, they sure manage to be exceptionally crass.

Whereas most people can coexist with conflicting opinions, the folks at The Stranger go out of their way to bully people who don’t think like them. In this case, trying to hurt a business because the white owner embraces hip-hop music! And that’s a shame because some of their reporting brings up worthwhile issues to discuss and questions that need answers, but they only preach to a small minority of people who see issues the way they do.

In the world of Angela Garbes, hip-hop belongs to black people and white people aren’t allowed to touch it – she’d rather it be segregated. Sorry Sam Lachow, Macklemore, Eminem, Beastie Boys or anyone who isn’t black. You can’t make any money off of a style of music. It belongs to black people because … racism? Or something.

If you feel so inclined to support a business under attack by an extremist at The Stranger, you can check Rock Creek out here. Their Biggie Smalls sounds delicious!