Today white Wallingford foodies Lauren and Chris Stein said that five years after they plastered a Black Lives Matter bumper sticker to their Subaru Forester, they’re still struggling to find the time to try their neighborhood’s only Black-owned restaurant, Pam’s Kitchen.
“As serious foodies, we’ve just been really busy hitting new places like Tom Douglas’ foraged pasta place in Bellevue and stuff like that is taking up a lot of our time,” said Lauren, as she cleaned off the BLM bumper sticker she bought on Amazon. “We were actually gonna go last night, but then we got too busy segregating our recycling.”
The couple also confessed that a while ago they were going to go to Pam’s—which is also the only Trinidadian restaurant in the state—but then their only black friend moved to Florida so now they basically can’t.
“What are we supposed to do? Walk in there and risk maybe feeling like a racial minority for even a moment without someone there to tell everyone we’re some of the good ones with a BLM sticker and everything? Sure, the chances of that happening in an 83% white neighborhood are low, but you know what? They’re not zero,” said Chris as Lauren nodded empathetically. “And, sure, they reportedly have a soft coconut fried bread made from unicorn-flown rainbows for their jerk chicken sandwich and a Sorrel Rum Punch made from citrus-soaked tropical memories that cure seasonal depression, but it’s just uncomfortable. While I care about the black community, my followers are also counting on me to post my 27th photo of marinara pasta, no salt or cheese, at one of at least 100 Italian restaurants in the greater Seattle area.”
At press time, the couple said they will have time to go there after doing a travel vlog on an 8-day vacation in Italy, which they were heading off to as they avoided eye contact with Pam’s Kitchen in an UberBlack.
