Waiter, There’s A Domestic Violence in My Soup!

It’s been just over a year since Austin’s most recognizable chef, Paul Qui, was arrested on charges of beating the shit out of his girlfriend. Can we please go back and eat his food now? After all, we really miss that salmon butter.

The latest verdict on this urgent question comes in the Austin Chronicle, in which Melody Fury visits Kuneho, the new Qui-owned restaurant now occupying the space of Qui’s shuttered eponymous operation. The answer is: Yes! But Kuneho’s drink service is not great :( !

The Austin food scene has been obsessed with the “redemption” of Qui since practically the day he was arrested in March 2016; his girlfriend accused Qui of attacking her and preventing her (and her child) from leaving the apartment they shared. Not five months later, the Austin American-Statesman’s Matthew Odam gave Qui the opportunity to wallow around in the Unknowable Tragic Pain of the Arteestuh and say he was Very Sorry, Again For Complicating Your Feelings About His Brussels Sprouts.

The “special” feature is an achievement in equivocation, though there’s no need to be surprised by that. Qui enjoys (I use that phrase in the present tense, deliberately) idol-like status among Austinites who know even the bare minimum about the local food scene. Odam needed not to piss Qui off, nor piss off (the vast majority of) readers who care more about Qui’s cooking than they do his rap sheet, while at the same time being seen Taking Things Very Seriously in that way that daily papers have to do without actually coming down on any side of an issue, ever, for any reason.

After the Statesman “special” ran, Dan Solomon over at Texas Monthly thoughtfully unpacked Austin’s desperation to absolve Qui and get back to the ceviche:

Qui needs for us to forgive him because his businesses depend on it. And he’s lucky, because that fits neatly into how we think of redemption — do something great that reminds us of who you were before we learned the ugly things you were capable of. Replacing his namesake restaurant with a concept he’s calling Kuneho signifies a desire for a new beginning, and headlines that lead with things like “Top Chef Winner Paul Qui to Close His Hit Restaurant Qui,” “Paul Qui to close namesake restaurant,” and “Austin’s top chef pulls the plug on acclaimed namesake restaurant” create the illusion of Qui suffering consequences for his actions — his restaurant is closing, after all. But he’s not so much closing Qui as much as he’s rebranding the restaurant so that it no longer has the name of a man currently facing charges for domestic violence on the side of the building.

In the Chronicle, Fury picks up this boldly lazy “redemption” narrative — the only one we know to use, apparently, when it comes to men who abuse women — and, incredibly, cheapens it even further by suggesting that while Kuneho’s food is very good, Qui might do better to redeem himself by spending more time at the restaurant and thereby improving the service, which Fury found lacking. What?

Yes:

The question of whether Qui has redeemed himself lingered in my mind throughout the meals. When focusing on the food alone, the answer was a resounding “yes.” It was clear that chef de cuisine Mia Li runs a tight ship, sending out only what she was proud of. Even so, the show’s tune has changed. The transformation to deliver more approachable fare was indeed successful. But while sitting at the counter, the hot and cold service was unable to swoon me like they once did. At each progression of the meal, I couldn’t help but ask “Where’s Qui?” and wonder if he would one day bring cohesion between food and service back.

So look, the food totally made up for that time Paul Qui was arrested for attacking his girlfriend in front of her child, but the service really did not make up for the time that Paul Qui was arrested for attacking his girlfriend in front of her child.

“The question of whether Qui has redeemed himself,” for what? For the domestic violence incident, or something else? Because if it’s something else — say, a bad meal — I can see why a reviewer might wonder whether this experience was going to improve upon the last one. But this sure reads as if Fury’s wondering whether the food she ate at a restaurant — where, by the way, one might surmise that the chef de cuisine has more than a little bit of influence — absolves the restaurant owner of the domestic abuse of a wholly separate human being who might have her own ideas about what qualifies as absolution for Paul Qui.

In fact, if you take the phrase “the shocking March 2016 arrest on charges of assault” out of Fury’s review, the piece reads as if the offense committed by Paul Qui is his inability to overcome a reputation for uneven service at his dining establishment. How else do you go from “The question of whether Qui has redeemed himself lingered in my mind throughout the meals” to “I couldn’t help but ask ‘Where’s Qui?’ and wonder if he would one day bring cohesion between food and service back”?

This would be appallingly bad writing and editing on any subject; as a treatment of domestic violence, it is inexcusable. And on top of everything else, it’s un-fucking-necessary. This milquetoast jibber-jabber about redemption, which has the emotional sophistication of a Disney straight-to-video release, is nothing but an attempt to create a justification for reviewing (and, maybe, enjoying) a socio-culturally important part of the Austin dining landscape. I think Kuneho should be reviewed, not despite Qui’s apparent history of violence, but because of it.

Austinites are fully prepared, anxious even, to give Paul Qui the benefit of the doubt and return to uncritical appreciation of the cute dude who makes good sushi. They are no different than the rest of us — all of us — who make decisions about what to excuse, what to forgive, and what to overlook when it comes to the cultural output of talented, problematic, and even abusive, people. The Austin Chronicle had an opportunity to be plain about its approach to the review: Paul Qui is Austin’s best-known chef, and therefore the paper feels an obligation to review his food while acknowledging that it is doing so in this case after < assault charges >. Or: Readers are hungry for alleged domestic abuser Paul Qui’s food, here’s what it tastes like. Or: Paul Qui has a history of addiction and violent behavior; you can take that into account, along with the following information about Kuneho, when deciding whether to eat there. Or: Paul Qui’s food is good and that clearly matters (to readers, to this reviewer, to Austin diners, or whoever) more than his criminal history.

Austin’s food lovers are hungry to have their chicken karaage divorced from something as distasteful as domestic violence. It’s unsavory to say so, but at least it doesn’t have people going looking for moral rectitude in a slice of Wagyu.

This piece is cross-posted at Resistance Kitchen, the recipe blog for the end of days.