The Restaurant that Divided a City.
If you’re a Lewis Black fan, you’ve probably heard his ‘End of the Universe’ joke, about finding a Starbucks across the street from a Starbucks. Well, let me tell you about the restaurant that divided an entire city.
There is a restaurant in my city called - and I couldn’t possibly make this up - ‘Hillbilly Heaven’. From the name alone you might guess what they serve - Southern Barbecue. Lots of beef and pork, ribs, a few scattered chicken dishes… what you would expect ‘Hillbillies’ to eat, right? They do this in the traditional way, too, smoking it for at least 12 hours, which means they can (and apparently often do) run out of certain menu items. And, as you might have guessed, they have a sort of backwoodsy sense of humor. Up until today, I had no idea that this place was capable of causing such a cultural uproar, until they were featured in the local newspaper. But they weren’t featured for their food, oh no… they were featured for their ‘offensive’ signs.Now, how offensive these signs are varies from person to person and how exactly you take it. If you take them a little too literally, it could come across as racist. The signs in question include a list of food they do not serve - some of which are ethnic foods like Shawarma, Kebabs, ‘Mexican’… things that really, you shouldn’t expect to find at a place called Hillbilly Heaven, right? There’s also a sign that reads “What would make you think this is a Korean BBQ? Do you see any f’n ducks in the window?” A little bit on the racist side, yes, but again - what part of ‘Hillbilly Heaven’ says ‘Korean BBQ!’ to you?
I’m a bit on the fence about whether this constitutes ‘racism’. He isn’t speaking ill of those foods or the cultures they come from (Well, maybe “f’n ducks” was a bit off-colour), just stating that he does not and never will sell them. It isn’t as though he posted a sign saying “We don’t serve people from x country”, though there is a sign that says “To better serve you, our staff speaks: ENGLISH”. You could construe that as racism, but also remember that while Canada is a great big melting pot of cultures, the national language is English, except in Quebec, where the language is primarily French. And as an interesting point, someone mentioned that while in Quebec, it wasn’t uncommon to see shops and restaurants that stated the staff only speak French - would you consider that racism, based on the fact that Quebec is a French-speaking province? I wouldn’t think so. That would be like going to Sweden and claiming that they’re all racists because they speak Swedish.
Reading the comments on the article is where things really begin to divide up. On the one hand are people who are screaming for this restaurant to be closed down because the owner is ‘clearly racist’ and then there are people applauding the owner for not only sticking to his ‘Hillbilly’ atmosphere, but also earning himself a free plug from the local newspaper. One of the repeated comments is ‘Get a sense of humor’ or alternatively, ‘learn to laugh’. In many ways, I agree with them - I can laugh a bit at the signs because I can understand that the way they’re worded is purely to lend to the atmosphere of the place.
One of the funniest comments I saw was from someone who screamed for the owner to ‘Go back to [his] own country’, believing that the owner is the stereotypical ‘Racist American Redneck’. ‘Go back to your own country’ is in itself a racist comment, but since it’s against a perceived ‘White American’, you don’t happen to see it! (And as an interesting point of fact, the owner is actually a Canadian, born and raised in this city. He just happens to like Southern-style Barbecue and found a folksy way of presenting it.)
Indeed, the entire comments section smacks of blind hatred and a rush to be the politically correct one. The ‘Go Back to your own country’ slur has been used by both sides of the fence, with the PC Bandwagon using it to tell the owner to GTFO, and the people saying they see no racism using it to tell anyone offended by the signs to GFY.
I myself have never eaten at Hillbilly Heaven. I knew it was there and thought it was a pretty unique and unusual idea for a restaurant, but I’m not partial to beef and I can’t even watch someone eating ribs without thinking of zombies and getting chest pains. But that isn’t to say I never would - whether the signs are offensive or not, I can’t really say I see the signs as ‘racist’, even if the one about Korean BBQ is a bit of a step in that direction. I guess the way I look at it, you have to take the signs with a grain of salt - this is the kind of thing you would expect a hillbilly to say, it doesn’t in any way mean that the owner or anyone working at the restaurant are racists. Who knows - the owner might actually like a lot of the food he doesn’t serve, and maybe he likes a bit of Korean BBQ once in a while. But since he called the place ‘Hillbilly Heaven’ - you really have to expect them to have signs like that. If he starts putting up signs that read ‘Go back where you come from, dammit’, I might change my mind.
