Roy Choi Responds to Zero-Star NY Times Review: “All Minorities Aren’t Criminals”

It’s got to be a tough day to wake up as Pete Wells, the The New York Times restaurant critic currently enduring a hailstorm of negativity after dropping zero stars on upstart fast food model LocoL. The Roy Choi/Daniel Patterson chain with a do-good ethos got rocked yesterday by a lackluster review from the now-roving East Coast critic, but it’s Wells who may have been hit the worst.

Following his 1,000 word review on the Oakland outlet of LocoL, in which he talked about bulletproof glass and Tartine bread, Wells has been forced to duck and cover from a variety of negative backlash in the larger food world. A few examples:

As for Choi, he’s taking the high road. Or, at least, the Positive Mental Attitude road, leaving his normally active Twitter account alone except for one or two cryptic tweets. Instead, Choi took to Instagram to drop the following hammer:

It’s a measured but forceful response, with Choi mostly saying that all of it — the critics, the folks who don’t believe in the model, you name it — is part of the process, and the more you start to agitate people the more you know you’re on the right path. He also makes sure to note that the food is not as bad as Wells seems to think it is, before dropping these few lines:

And all minorities aren’t criminals either. And all hoods aren’t filled with dangerous people either. But the pen has created a lot of destruction over the course of history and continues to. He didn’t need to go there but he did.

Go there, indeed. In the meantime, Choi has lots of other projects to keep his nose out of the newspaper (including building more LocoL’s in places that might need them most), not least of which is a new location for his original give-back enterprise 3 Worlds Cafe, which is opening up on 103rd right down the block from LocoL in Watts soon.

• The New York Times Critic Ravages LocoL With Zero-Star Review [ELA]

Watch: Sampling the menu at LocoL