I Know a Perception Problem When I See One

Not even a year into my first job, as a commercial litigator at one of the most prestigious law firms in America, a partner told me that I had a “perception problem.” My work product didn't matter to him, he said. He suggested that I remedy the issue by putting gum balls on my desk, for starters.

After scratching my head for a good long while, I realized that telling someone she had a “perception problem” was a dressed-up way of telling her she just didn't fit in. Not such an issue, until that inability to fit in has the power to eliminate that person’s only source of income and, in my case, ruin the very beginning of a career.

I had attended schools and socialized in contexts in which I had no choice but to stand out, and I’d decided long before I went to law school that I always would be myself: a short-haired, mostly-pant-and-colorful-clothes-wearing, youthful-spirited, strong-willed black girl. I didn't change, and I didn't lose my first job as a lawyer. I also never, ever forgot that conversation.

So when I watched Top Chef season nine, I couldn't help but notice that competitor Beverly Kim had a “perception problem.” She was bullied, at worst, and generally disliked, at best (with a few exceptions). Her problem couldn't be explained by gender and ethnicity alone, because Kristen Kish, also a Korean American woman, who competed in Top Chef season ten, was adored by her cast mates. Kim’s problem couldn't be explained by work product either, because, like Kish, after being eliminated in the eleventh episode in the main competition, she fought her way through “Last Chance Kitchen” and was able to rejoin her cast mates for the finale.

In the end, Kish won, Kim lost, and Kim’s “perception problem” probably played a role in her defeat.

Kim’s Top Chef bio provides our first clue as to how her cast mates may have perceived her. We learn that she is “influenced by her mother’s cooking … [Her] style is modern Asian cuisine … She believes in cooking from her heart because if it excites her, it will excite others too. If she were a food, she says, ‘I would be kimchi since it is funky, spicy and addictive which matches my eccentric, yet soulful personality.’” While Kim’s bio notes that she has had formal training in the culinary arts, the overwhelming message is that Kim cooks from the soul and draws on her ethnic background and heritage for inspiration.

It’s no secret that the perception of a chef of color who cooks from the soul and categorizes his food as ethnic is that he may not necessarily be the most skilled. Take a look at my first column for an example of how a chef’s skill gets downplayed by critics when he is “ethnic” and decides to cook ethnic food.

Kish’s bio is much shorter. She, too, is formally educated, but her “personal style is modern and contemporary French cuisine with Italian influences. Her favorite thing to cook is a French macaroon.” French cuisine is generally accepted as the gold standard of traditional chefing.

So far, Kish colors within the lines; Kim, not so much.

Now let’s take a look at Kim’s cast mates’ gripes:

Episode Five

When working in a small kitchen with the other contestants, Kim, complains co-competitor Nyesha Arrington, leaves her colanders out and moves Arrington’s materials. Kim claims she was “single[d] out” and that everyone was “leaving stuff everywhere.”

Episode Six

Contestant Heather Terhune flies off the handle because she feels that Kim, tasked with peeling, deveining, and cutting four hundred shrimp, did not work quickly enough. Terhune notes, “If that was my prep cook and he’s working on shrimp for two days, I would be through the roof.” She makes the argument again in the show’s reunion special, substituting sous-chef for prep cook. Note: Kim is a chef and Terhune’s equal. Terhune became fixated on Kim’s shrimp preparation when the main goof in that episode revolved around bad timing in cooking steaks. The chef in charge of the latter job is eliminated from the competition.

Episode Seven

While paired with Kim for this challenge, Terhune complains that Kim “doesn't think like a chef.”

Terhune warns Kim that Terhune is not going to be sent home because they make a dish that is “too Asian.”

After going off by herself to cook in her own style, Terhune threatens, “We might want to think about the name of our dish, too. I don’t want it to appear to be a completely Asian dish.”

When called to task for her team’s lack of unity, Terhune complains, “I felt like I had no say in our dish. I kept telling you [i.e., Kim] I didn’t want to do anything Asian.”

At the judges’ table, Terhune once again rants about Kim’s slow shrimp preparation during the previous challenge, using that isolated incident to call Kim’s work ethic, as a whole, into question.

Other cast members observe that Kim was treated unfairly during the episode and, at the reunion, judge Tom Colicchio exclaims that he had never seen anything like Terhune’s treatment of Kim, in Top Chef history.

Episode Ten

In “Restaurant Wars,” the contestants split into two teams that each create a restaurant from the ground up.

Cast mate, Sarah Grueneberg asks Kim to find olives for Grueneberg’s dish. When Kim decides to focus on her own dish instead of assisting her, Grueneberg condescendingly lectures Kim on the necessity of teamwork.

Another fellow member of the cast, Lindsay Arnold, yells at Kim, “Why are you plating with a fucking plastic spoon?”

Arnold later tells Kim that she is sorry: “I apologize if I took it out on you but you were fucking up my dish.”

Grueneberg chimes in, saying to Kim, “Lindsay worked with you on that dish for a long time.”

In response, Kim notes, “Lindsay and Sarah are definitely treating me like a child.”

Again, Kim is herself a chef and their equal in the kitchen.

Episode Eleven

Pleading her case before the judges, Kim stands by the fact that she cooks “from [her] heart.” She is eliminated from the competition.

Last Chance Kitchen

As episodes twelve through fourteen air, Kim competes head-to-head with their respective losers on Last Chance Kitchen, the show’s separate Web series in which the eliminated contestants vie for the chance to rejoin the Top Chef finalists.

At the beginning of each battle of the second-chance competition, judge Chef Colicchio asks the audience, comprised of members of the cast who have been eliminated in previous rounds of the Last Chance Kitchen tournament, if they would bet on Kim to win the next round. All of them consistently respond with silence. Kim is present during these Q&A sessions. She goes on to outcook every chef in Last Chance Kitchen.

In the final heat of these competitions, cast member Dakota Weiss comments, disparagingly, “Beverly cooked Asian again. Of course she did. That’s her style.” Note that by the time Weiss makes this observation, Kim had successfully gotten through all rounds that required that she cook other types of cuisine (against Nyesha Arrington using Mediterranean ingredients, and against Chris Crary in a lamb-chop-marshmallow showdown).

Kim points out, “If you’re an Italian-roots chef, you’re gonna cook Italian. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that. All those negative opinions about myself are totally lies.” And she’s right. Fabio Viviani of Top Chef season five consistently cooked Italian food and was praised and adored for it.

Episode Fifteen

Kim comes back to the main competition’s finale and cooks salmon tartare and slow-roasted char. Judge Colicchio observes that Kim hasn't used Asian flavors in her cooking (as he does almost every time she hasn't used them throughout the season), and she’s eliminated.

A Note on Kim’s Personality

During the reunion, Terhune asserts that in competition, Kim “didn't trust herself and that she would ask all of these questions.” Kim explains, “Teamwork is asking questions and making sure that we’re on the same page. I do have confidence, but it comes off in a different way.” Aware of the bias against her communication style, even Kim herself admits that she “wanted to leave the quiet, sweet side at home,” but couldn't.

We know that professional kitchens are male dominant and that stereotypically masculine attributes are praised and encouraged in all chefs, male and female. It’s unclear whether Kim — who readily acknowledged that she grew up wanting to be a housewife who spends most of her time in the kitchen, like her Korean mother — sees her cultural identity as tied to a less aggressive communication style. It’s worth noting, however, that Kuniko Yagi, a season-ten competitor, born in Gunma, Japan, whose favorite dish was a “family-style hot pot dish,” was cut because she had a “tough time saying no.” When a female chef is criticized by other women for exhibiting typically feminine personality traits and those traits also are culturally specific, that criticism reflects a cultural bias as well.

It seems, then, that in the court of perception, Kim’s major flaw was her Korean-ness, expressed both in her cooking (when she served Korean influenced cuisine, her cast mates implied that she took the easy way out and wasn't a team player; when she went with other influences, the judges assumed that she had taken a huge risk) and, possibly, in her communication style. Her refusal to assimilate — not her skill level or work ethic — caused the other chefs to question her ability and strength in the kitchen.

For her part, Kristen Kish sailed through the first eleven episodes of the competition as well as Last Chance Kitchen. Only, in Kish’s case, there was nary a mention of the ethnic influences in her cooking or her personality, and her cast mates consistently bet on her to win. In fact, discussion of Kish’s ethnicity doesn't occur until the finale, when she asks her Filipino cast mate, Sheldon Simeon, for sesame oil, and he responds, “You’re going Asian. You don’t cook Asian you Asian person.” Kish retorts, “It’s a white-person Asian.” We discover in the final episode that Kish had planned on using a portion of her winnings to go to Korea “to see where [she] came from” because she was adopted into a white American family as a four-month-old.

I’m not arguing that Kish didn't deserve to win or that she wasn't true to her own identity; I am arguing that Kim was undeservedly bullied because of hers. We have to acknowledge that Kim’s “perception problem” was an obstacle that she was constantly negotiating in addition to what was required of her for the show’s cooking challenges. And while the judges never questioned Kim’s skill level, we have to wonder whether she lost — potentially changing her career and, certainly, her immediate financial trajectory — ultimately because she simply was worn down and pressured by her cast mates. It was an odd choice, after all, for her to abandon her “Asian flavors” so close to the finish line.