Estimates of food businesses that closed due to COVID showed that Chinese enclaves in both Brooklyn and Manhattan were the ones with the highest figures, with 16% in Sunset Park and 27% in Chinatown ( Yi et al., 2022). Moreover, numerous media outlets and empirical studies reported that Asian restaurants had less business starting as early as January 2020 ( Alcorn, 2020 Shen-Berro, 2020 Yi et al., 2022). The Pew Research Center found that the highest increase in unemployment observed between February and May of 2020 was among Asian Americans, from 2.5 to 20.3% ( Pew Research Center, 2020). While virtually all restaurants in the US have suffered substantial economic losses, early reports suggest that Asian restaurants, which can encompass a number of global cuisines, were impacted the most. We end by discussing the implications of this finding for the history of Asian cuisine in the US, theoretical frameworks to understand assimilation, and the restaurant industry.Īs one of the worst global health crises in human history, the COVID-19 pandemic has also devastated many industries and perhaps none more so than restaurants. Using a synthetic control approach, we find that Asian restaurants uniquely received more citations after news of the pandemic became pervasive in the US. In this study, we use 3-years of New York City restaurant health inspection data to examine trends in citation scores before and after the onset of the news of the COVID-19 pandemic. Overlooked in this body of literature, as well as in conversations on the impacts of COVID-19 on Asian restaurants, is the role of how government institutions shape these biases against a cuisine that has hundreds of years of history in the US yet remains distinctly ‘foreign’. However, discrimination against Asian Americans and their cuisine is not new, as it is rooted in a long and history of assimilation and racism. Media outlets argue that this decline in business reflects biases that are linked to the China- and food-related origin of COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated the restaurant industry, with Asian restaurants having perhaps suffered the most, as many reported business losses well before shelter-in-place orders were announced.
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