After racist threats forced a Southeast Asian restaurant to close down, the owner reopened a new restaurant as an homage to his immigrant parents

• A Southeast Asian restaurant closed down last year after facing false accusations of serving dog meat.
• The accusations are grounded in the racist stereotype of Asians eating dogs.
• The restaurant reopened recently with support from the community.

David Rasavong first noticed strange reviews for his Fresno restaurant on a Monday night in May. He had just put his kids to bed when he saw several Google reviews mentioning dog meat. Rasavong didn't think too much of it; just reported them to Google before going to sleep.

The next morning, Rasavong woke up to find his restaurant's Yelp, Facebook, Instagram, and email accounts flooded with dozens of scathing reviews and comments. Rasavong recalled some of them: "Disgusting." "How can you do this?" "You guys should be arrested."

They accused the restaurant of killing, selling, and serving dog meat.

Rasavong soon discovered that a supposed animal rights activist had taken to social media to imply that a dog tied up at someone else's house next door would be served on his restaurant Tasty Thai's menu.

Within days of the accusation — grounded in the racist stereotype of Asians eating dogs — Rasavong shuttered his restaurant, which he had opened just seven months earlier as a homage to his immigrant parents. It no longer felt safe with the continuing stream of harassment and the people lingering outside the restaurant.

A harmful racist stereotype

Rasavong particularly remembers the phone calls he fielded at the restaurant.

"Naively, I thought we could talk sense to people," Rasavong told Business Insider. "But when I started listening to the voice mails and taking calls, it was, 'Go back to your country, you're disgusting. You guys are all dog eaters.'"

There were also vitriolic comments online, including people who said, "This is why I don't eat at Chinese restaurants," falsely conflating all Asians, according to Rasavong.

The harassment didn't stop there. After Tasty Thai received the barrage of negative reviews, Rasavong said a handful of other Asian restaurants in the area also began getting phone calls and verbal attacks.

"It broke my heart," Rasavong said.

The stereotype of Asians eating dog meat is rooted in outdated and exaggerated beliefs, harnessed as a means of othering and exoticizing Asian people. The practice has persisted in the US for more than 150 years, grounded in xenophobia toward the arrival of Chinese immigrants in the 1800s.

During the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, a replica of a Filipino village featuring a group of Igorot tribe members grilling dogs. Staged just two years after the US won the Philippine-American War, the exhibition was advertised as "The Call of the Wild: Head-Hunting, Dog-Eating, Wild People from the Philippines."

More recently in 2016, an Oregon senate candidate apologized after he said Vietnamese refugees were a "huge problem" because they were "harvesting people's dogs and cats."

The stereotype has only intensified amid a surge in anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes during the coronavirus pandemic. In 2022, Asian-owned businesses saw the largest increase in hate speech on Yelp, according to the review platform's latest annual trust and safety report. In 2021, Yelp removed just nine anti-Asian posts. In 2022, it removed 475.

Rallying together

In November, Rasavong reopened his restaurant under a new name: Love & Thai.

"The name means the world to us. It's how I pay homage to my parents," he told Business Insider.

Rasavong was surprised and heartened by the support he received from the community around him. Local and international graphic designers, interior designers, and artists offered their services for free, while local organizations helped get the word out.

A mural in the new restaurant, painted by local artist Hana Luna Her, depicts Rasavong's mother when she was young, dressed in traditional Laotian clothing. She stands next to an elephant, the national animal of Laos, and expansive rice fields that blend into the Golden Gate Bridge, where Rasavong's parents immigrated to in 1981, and Fresno, where the restaurant is located. Above the mural are the words, "Spread the love."

"We believe that's the most important thing. There's too much hate and anger toward each other in this day and age," Rasavong said.

Customers have flocked to Love & Thai and shown their support, and Rasavong wants to share that support with others in the community.

"I want the community to continue to support each other, to give each other the benefit of the doubt before assuming things based on stereotypes," Rasavong said. "We'll all be in a better place for it."