Cho could not be reached for comment.<\/p>\n
Her video reached thousands of new eyes when social media personality Ed Choi, whose combined TikTok and Instagram accounts have nearly 800,000 followers, shared her account with his own commentary, and has posted more than a dozen updates on the topic since.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have never tolerated racism in any way and never will,\u201d Great White owners Trude and Cooper said in a joint statement. \u201cWe\u2019ve worked intentionally to create a workplace and community that bring people together from many different backgrounds and cultures around the world. With that comes a responsibility, to ensure that everyone who walks through our doors feels welcome, respected, and safe. These are standards we hold ourselves to every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I saw one review that said, \u201cWell, my salmon was undercooked, and now I know it was because I was Asian.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2014 Sage Wiley, server at Great White<\/p>\n
With the social media videos on Great White, a fresh string of allegations surfaced about Gran Blanco when it was operated by Trude and Cooper. <\/p>\n
Sarah Rose Brier worked at Gran Blanco between 2021 and 2022 in roles including hostess, barback and server. Brier and two other former employees alleged that hosts and doormen at Gran Blanco were told by managers to turn away prospective guests based on race, ethnicity, weight and \u201cvibe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Managers at the time at Gran Blanco could not be reached for comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were told we should not let in ethnic-looking people, that the owners really don\u2019t want that, they want to keep a certain vibe in here,\u201d Brier said. <\/p>\n
Brier also said Gran Blanco\u2019s DJs were told to avoid playing rap and hip-hop so as to not attract \u201ca certain crowd in here to make it \u2018ghetto.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The restaurant Gran Blanco, visible lower left, has been under new ownership since June.<\/p>\n
(Alon Goldsmith \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
Montana Pine, who worked as a Gran Blanco server for roughly three years, said she reported discriminatory statements against employees to management, but \u201cthey weren\u2019t receptive to any sort of feedback.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has never been a policy or practice to treat customers differently based on race or any other factor,\u201d Cooper said in response to the Gran Blanco allegations.<\/p>\n
Other current and former employees said there are no practices of discrimination within the company, whether pertaining to seating, wait times or internal hiring practices. Such alleged activity would violate California law.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe allegations are very frustrating,\u201d said Passion Lyons, a former Gran Blanco employee who now works as a manager at Great White. \u201cThat hasn\u2019t been the culture there at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sage Wiley, a server at the Melrose location where Cho\u2019s video was filmed, said that the seats in question are the restaurant\u2019s most requested. \u201cWe have people all day long asking to move to outside corners or just an outside table,\u201d she said. \u201cWe try our best, but even then people will come up with 1,000 excuses for why they didn\u2019t get what they asked for, or for why they weren\u2019t the ones that got to move outside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wiley said she was working when Cho came to dine and was seated in a corner of the patio. That day, she witnessed multiple people in the video pick their own seats on the patio. Given the restaurant\u2019s popularity, she added, staff members seat diners wherever they immediately can.<\/p>\n
Wiley characterized the chatter online as \u201cridiculous. [\u2026] I saw one review that said, \u2018Well, my salmon was undercooked, and now I know it was because I was Asian.\u2019 So now you\u2019re saying not only is this front-of-house, but the back-of-house is also trained to apparently racially profile and cook food in that way?\u201d<\/p>\n
One commenter online alleged they were seated in a corner because they were wearing a cross necklace. Wiley said that some of the negative comments came from guests whom she\u2019s served for years, which she said hurt her personally.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
One of the breakfast bowls at the Great White cafe on Larchmont Boulevard in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
(Laurie Ochoa \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
The onslaught from critics has extended beyond comments on social media posts.<\/p>\n
Some staff members said they have received messages calling them racist for defending the restaurant online, and some said they are afraid to come to work. They also said fake reservations and catering orders are now common and some include hateful messages under the memos.<\/p>\n
Cooper and Trude\u2019s families are being targeted with harassing phone calls and messages, including being sent photos of Trude\u2019s children\u2019s school, the restaurateur said. Hostesses have fielded callers asking where the restaurant seats certain ethnicities, sometimes using racial slurs over the phone. Multiple employees said this has been particularly distressing as people of color themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be someone who has been racially discriminated against, to be someone who\u2019s been called every name under the book, to think that I would actively work at a place that told me I would have to segregate people or start seating people based on their races is, to me, so disheartening,\u201d Wiley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve watched celebrities retweet this \u2014 not even ever coming in \u2014 automatically assuming we have to be racist,\u201d she added. \u201cThis is also just a lesson for me as a human being to not take everything I see online so seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much of the allegations\u2019 spread traces back to social media personality Choi, who summarized Cho\u2019s original video on Oct. 2 and who has regularly posted video updates of his own.<\/p>\n
Upon seeing Cho\u2019s post, Choi said he began searching for online reviews that might echo the sentiments and found posts alleging racist practices at Great White. Some dated to more than one year ago. Some of Cho\u2019s videos provide screenshots of the negative reviews, along with texts and messages from former employees alleging discriminatory practices and toxic work environments. (Reviews for Great White are currently disabled on Yelp.) <\/p>\n
The restaurant\u2019s name is derived from the great white shark species. In one video<\/a>, Choi likens the shark and the restaurant owners to \u201ccolonizers\u201d because the species migrates across the world. <\/p>\n \u201cGreat White is named after a shark,\u201d Cooper and Trude wrote. \u201cIt has nothing to do with race. Any notion that we have mistreated customers or employees or seated people based on their ethnicity is absolutely outrageous and completely false. Everyone is welcome here.\u201d<\/p>\n Choi also labeled the restaurants\u2019 use of Asian cuisine appropriation and \u201ca restaurant embodiment of colonization.\u201d<\/p>\n The restaurant\u2019s locations serve a broad spectrum of dishes, from avocado toast, smoothie bowls and overnight oats to pizza, falafel, pasta, coconut curry, poke and ceviche. A since-deleted description on Great White\u2019s website called the menu \u201cCoastal Californian, a blend of cultures and backgrounds that \u2026 could be found in most coastal areas of Europe, Australia, and the Americas.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a very diverse staff,\u201d said Lyons, a current employee. \u201cWith our food, a lot of Australian dishes are inspired by different cultures, and that\u2019s what we do at Great White. We\u2019re celebrating that.\u201d<\/p>\n As the Great White controversy continues, Choi has since released a video<\/a> condemning harassment of Great White\u2019s owners. \u201cMaking fun of them in the comments and being snarky is one thing, but obviously I do not condone any harassment or anything of that nature,\u201d Choi said. <\/p>\n Last week Choi encouraged former and current Great White and Gran Blanco employees to contact him to potentially coordinate a lawsuit against the businesses.<\/p>\n Choi, a former stand-up comic and clothing brand co-founder, began creating videos recapping social justice-focused news items in 2021, spurred by the Atlanta spa shootings<\/a>. Multiple comments on Choi\u2019s Great White and Gran Blanco videos accuse the content creator of \u201cattacking\u201d the restaurants for attention and social media engagement. Choi denied this.<\/p>\n Choi was also involved in spurring another online controversy of a restaurant that spread so rapidly it eventually led to its closure. San Francisco\u2019s Kis Cafe closed its doors in July after allegations of rude treatment<\/a> toward a social media influencer went viral. Chef-owner Luke Sung credited Choi with some of the incident\u2019s virality and vitriol directed at his other restaurant, Domo.<\/p>\n \u201cA guy [on TikTok] named Ed Choi pointed the hate army toward Domo<\/a>,\u201d Sung told the San Francisco Standard<\/a>. \u201cPeople have been leaving hate comments all the way from Copenhagen, England, Malaysia.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI woke up today being like, \u2018I really hope there\u2019s not an update I have to do today on Great White,\u2019\u201d Choi said. \u201cIt\u2019s not great for my mental health to stay on stuff like that because I\u2019m driven a lot by empathy. That\u2019s part of the reason why I do this. I don\u2019t really like to dwell on stories.\u201d<\/p>\n As of Tuesday afternoon Choi had posted 14 videos on Great White or Gran Blanco.<\/p>\n Some Great White employees said that business was down across the restaurant\u2019s locations for the last week.<\/p>\n \u201cI wish that there was more of an effort to really understand the things that have been posted online, because it\u2019s really damaging and it\u2019s not true,\u201d Lyons said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t just affect the [owners]. There are hundreds of employees who come from many different backgrounds, whose lives are being affected by this and [it] could potentially affect their paychecks, their livelihoods.\u201d<\/p>\n