Oh my god that article about Michelle zauner crying in an H mart somehow reminded me of the test kitchen episode from the reply all podcast where Sue Li is talking abt how she was really excited to write abt soup dumplings but the white devils at BA didn’t care and the person interviewing sue noted how sad she sounded about it and sue had to PAUSE bc she got so emotional recalling how painful that experience was and many others like it. sorry this is such a long message but I literally can’t get that episode out of my mind ???
god yeah listening to that was so heartbreaking bc she was trying so hard not to make a big deal out of it and was like god it’s embarrassing to be crying about soup dumplings, but the at the end of that segment she’s like… ‘yeah clearly the fact that i would even remember it and bring it up all these years later and that it’s something i revisit obviously means that it has stayed with me.’ and she can’t even articulate it beyond that it just doesn’t feel good to have to think about it and she had to log off when everything with bon app was going down last year because it just hurt too much to engage with it at all and she couldn’t handle it.
and yeah i know gimlet and reply all have now also been Exposed wrt treatment of people of color and the attempts to prevent them from unionizing (and yikes you can REALLY tell whenever sruthi inserts herself into the story at all and just the entire way they tried to frame the narrative like.. just yikes it’s bad) but listening to the test kitchen series still hits hard. they interviewed so many people who used to work at bon app and you can hear it in those people’s voices when they tell these stories. and the fact that those people are being so vulnerable and revealing themselves to the point of openly crying with people who they thought were on their side but instead themselves actively and aggressively perpetuated the exact kind of work environment they’re talking about (and are pretty blatantly using this podcast series as a way of absolving themselves of their own complicity and abusive behavior and rehabilitating their image)…… fucking sucks. it just feels so exploitative and gross to have sruthi be the one to interview them. i can’t imagine what it must be like for the people they interviewed to be listening to the podcast now, especially seeing how everything has been framed within the narrative of the series and how little interest sruthi et al have in trying to actually grapple with larger issues of race, class, labor, and power that extend beyond what’s being portrayed as a relatively isolated ~drama~ happening at bon appetit.
anyways sruthi and pj stepping down immediately because of this… we love to see it 🥂
