Residents of Everett, Washington slammed a local restaurateur for naming his new establishment “The Soup Nazi Kitchen.”
By Ebin Sandler, World Israel News
In November 1995, Jerry Seinfeld’s eponymous television show aired an episode called “The Soup Nazi,” which lampooned a Manhattan chef as a petty dictator serving up irresistible bisque and chowder.
This month, a restaurateur in Everett, Washington decided to name his new establishment after the episode, calling his as-yet-unopened restaurant “The Soup Nazi Kitchen.”
Everett residents were not amused by Andrew Ho’s homage to the Seinfeld character, played by the Jewish actor Larry Thomas, whose catchphrase was “no soup for you!”
Ho raised the sign on his new restaurant last Tuesday, which “featured a stern-faced female cartoon character holding a ladle and a whip,” reported The Daily Herald. The website’s imagery also included “a cartoon character in a uniform reminiscent of an S.S. officer.”
By Wednesday, a vandal scrawled profanity on the facade, and windows appeared to be shot out with a pellet gun.
The reaction on social media was no less negative and Ho had the word “Nazi” painted black by Wednesday afternoon.
“It created too many problems and my neighbors were getting scared. It was a safety issue,” said Ho, who was also contacted by the Jewish community, the Herald reported.
According to the Herald report, the 46-year-old Chinese-American’s previous establishment, Alive Juice Bar, “was notorious for abrasive treatment of customers,” earning Ho the nickname “juice Nazi” from some of his customers.
In a video posted on the Herald site, Ho said he intended the name to be “provocative” as a “marketing ploy” and as a reference to the coronavirus “lockdown.” He said he decided to scrap the Nazi reference when he saw the “fear in peoples’ eyes.”
While Ho ordered 100 red “Soup Nazi Kitchen” T-shirts, which he planned to sell for $20 each, he is apparently shelving the merchandise.
Members of the local Jewish community blasted Ho for using genocide as the source of a humorous name for his restaurant, noting that a Holocaust survivor lives in the area.
“Given the fact that the Nazi regime committed genocide against the Jewish people and so many others, that kind of language belongs in history books and in context of history,” said Miri Cypers, the Anti-Defamation League’s Pacific Northwest regional director.
Passersby quoted by the Herald also condemned the name of the restaurant and said it didn’t belong in the their community.
In response to the controversy, Ho posted on his blog, “White supremacy is not on the rise. Nationalism — wrongly conflated with White supremacy — everywhere is on the rise.”
According to FBI statistics, anti-Semitic hate crimes are spiking.