/ck/ - Food & Cooking

Tieghan Gerard, the creator of the popular food blog Half Baked Harvest, found herself in hot water after posting a “quick” noodle recipe that she incorrectly called "pho."
The popular recipe creator shared a noodle soup recipe to her blog titled “Weeknight ginger pho ga (Vietnamese chicken soup)" in February. The recipe, as many pointed out, was not really pho — instead, it was more of a quick noodle dish with caramelized chicken and a “sweet, spicy, tangy sesame chile sauce.”
Immediately, Gerard’s fans began to criticize the inappropriate title on Instagram. Some commenters explained that pho shouldn't be a quick dish to begin with and that several of the steps in her recipe — like caramelizing the chicken — would not have gone into a traditional pho recipe.
“What upset me the most was that she passed it off as pho,” Suzanne Nuyen, a Vietnamese American recipe developer who runs the blog Bun Bo Bae, told TODAY Food. “The only thing that made it even close to pho was that it was noodles in a broth."
“I understand that food evolves … but when you’re riffing on a dish, in terms of ingredients, that doesn’t make sense,” she said.
Gerard eventually changed the title of the dish to “Easy sesame chicken and noodles in spicy broth” and issued an apology.
But many Vietnamese Americans believe the title change and apology aren't enough. During this time of racial reckoning, when violence against Asian Americans is on the rise, commenters aren't satisfied with a run-of-the-mill, PR-issued apology anymore, especially from those with such large followings.