This Delivery App Is Keeping Your Favorite Chinese Restaurants Alive
For Chinese and other Asian restaurants facing racism during the pandemic, Chowbus, an app focused on Asian cuisine, has made a difference
In mid-February, Stacy Jamieson, the general manager of Tian Fu restaurant in Seattle’s Northgate neighborhood, surveyed his 4,000-square-foot dining room at what was usually the dinner rush time. Every table was empty. Where the popular Szechuan restaurant had been enjoying 45-minute waits on weekends, now it was lucky to serve 10 tables in a whole day.
At the time, Covid-19 was still something many Americans had only heard about: It had killed thousands across Asia, but the U.S. was relatively unscathed. But anti-Asian sentiment, a racist backlash to the developing pandemic, was already bubbling across the country. Americans not only quietly judged Asian Americans but also physically attacked them: In New York, a man assaulted a Chinese woman for wearing a mask; in California’s San Fernando Valley, bullies beat up an Asian American boy and accused him of having the coronavirus.
“Chinese restaurants were perhaps the first place that Covid-19 racism was visible,” said James Boo, the managing producer of podcast Self-Evident, which focuses on Asian…
