Shibumi's White Chef Takes Aim at Japanese Restaurants for Not Being Japanese Enough

Los Angeles Sakura mochi — pink-hued rice cakes filled with red bean paste and wrapped in pickled cherry blossom leaves. Shutterstock An Instagram caption from chef David Schlosser sparked backlash from LA’s Japanese-American community — criticism Schlosser actively deleted from his post before eventually apologizing A post on Shibumi’s Instagram account on Thursday, April 15 sparked a wave of criticism from members of Los Angeles’s Japanese-American community. The Michelin-starred restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, best known for chef and owner David Schlosser’s adherence to traditional Japanese cookery, shared a post intended to advertise its sakura mochi dessert special but instead ignited a conversation around colonization, cuisine ownership, and authenticity. It also raised questions about the implications of a white chef who built his career on Japanese food — and was recently named a Japanese Cuisine Goodwill Ambassador — publicly disparaging Japanese restaurants to promote his own business. The post, which was also shared to Shibumi’s Facebook page but has since been deleted on that site, featured an image of sakura mochi with the caption: “Sakura mochi, the most iconic dessert in Japan. Yet no Japanese restaurants are featuring it? So sad. Makes my life harder. It’s because these Japanese restaurants…
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