Racism in Urban Fare Kelowna

My Experience Working at Urban Fare : Racism in the Restaurant

Last year, for about eight months, I worked in the kitchen at Urban Fare. I started off as a dishwasher as is normally the case in the kitchen hierarchy. You work hard, you prove yourself and you move up. That being said, I wasn’t all that keen in moving up within that company. I noticed a lot of corruption from the top down. First of all, its owned by a greedy billionaire, Jim Pattison, same dude who owns Save on Foods and various other companies. Second, there is so much management (and mismanagement) in that store it is unbelievable and the drama level is very high. So many cooks in the kitchen literally and the turnover rate is huge there. So many sous chefs, then store managers on top of that, none of them really getting along. Except for the sleazy two at the top. But this story isn’t about them. It’s about racism in the kitchen.

Though I wasn’t very keen on leaving the dish pit due to the constant drama in the kitchen I eventually found my way into the sushi bar. It seemed a perfect match for me as I have lived in Japan for six years, I love Japanese food, and I have a great respect for Asian culture and tradition. The sushi bar in Urban Fare has been run by a Korean family for many years. Having immigrated to Canada then settling down and having kids they are no strangers to the restaurant business here. They had previously owned a restaurant in Kelowna but were gearing up for retirement so opted to run the more manageable sushi bar at Urban Fare. Quality and standards were very high due to the excellent training of sushi master Henry who learned from real sushi chefs in Japan. It was truly an honour to work under him and beside his wife and son. I was very friendly with all of them and we even became friends outside of work, enjoying many meals and drinks together.

Henry chose me to be his protege in the sushi bar because he saw my deep respect for Asian tradition and especially my passion for Japanese food. Because of high pressure from management to sell very high volumes of sushi mass produced fresh every day they were also pressuring Henry to teach someone how to cut sashimi properly. He was the only one qualified to do it at the time.

Cutting sashimi is an artform. It requires a lot of skill and knowledge, much of which Henry learned in Japan and from his over 30 years experience as a sushi chef. This knowledge couldn’t be passed on overnight. Dealing with raw fish is also very sensitive and requires quite a lot of care. Not only is it expensive but if the fish isn’t handled properly it can be hazardous to peoples health. Henry was highly aware of these things. He told me that when he trained in Japan for the first year he was only allowed to make rice. That's how you start in a sushi kitchen, you perfect the rice then you work your way up.

Urban Fare was having none of that. They wanted more profit immediately because the kitchen was doing very poorly and the sushi bar was actually holding up the rest of the kitchen financially at the time. Regardless of that the Chefs in the kitchen treated this Korean family very poorly. One time, the lovely elderly lady Jean who worked very hard running the bar alongside her husband asked me why does the Chef (Chris) say good morning to everyone in the kitchen but not us? That broke my heart. Apparently Chris had a history with this family and they hated each other. Fair enough but it went deeper than that. Because of his refusal to actually speak with Henry (the sushi chef) I was often forced to be their go-between. It became exhausting especially because they were always running out of basic supplies for the sushi bar such as rice or crab meat or whatever due to the Chefs lack of communication and poor ordering skills.

Anyways, to make a long story short one day we had a very busy day ahead of us including a big catering order to be finished right away. One of the sous chefs (Carol) had under-scheduled the kitchen and tried to poach one of our sushi bar workers to move to a different area. I lost it with her because we had already been majorly overworked, over-stressed because of drama between management and totally fucked over because of constantly running out of supplies due to very high demand for sushi at Urban Fare. We really couldn’t spare a worker that day. Anyways, I got very angry with the sous chef and we started a yelling match. Henry came in between us and put his hand on her arm to calm her down. She yelled “He hit me! He hit me!”, which NEVER happened. I was right there and he simply put his hand on her arm. Then she said to him “You’re gonna pay for touching a white lady!”

I couldn’t believe my ears. After calling her quite a few horrible names, then going to management, I quit that job on the spot that day. I lost my opportunity to learn from a sushi master but I also lost some good friends who I worked with in that kitchen. So anyways, yeah its a corrupt company that employs racist management. There's quite a few more stories I could tell you about that place but Ill save those for another time. In the meantime, please don’t support Urban Fare Kelowna. They don’t need your money, nor do they need your support of their corrupt management and greedy billionaire owner. Why not go to the locally owned Lakeview Market down the street and support a smaller locally owned company? They have great produce and everything you need really. And much cheaper than Urban Fare.