By Victoria Surla

Last month, two George Brown College business professors were publicly accused of making racially prejudiced comments towards the owners of Simit & Chai, a Turkish-style café and eatery located on King Street West in Toronto.

In a collection of Instagram posts, the restaurant shared screenshots of messages sent by Dr. Robin Yap. One message said that “there was clearly a cultural component to how [Simit & Chai] address client inquiries”.

Yap, a GBC professor since 2009, ran a popular Instagram account known as @twopickyfoodies, on which he reviewed Toronto restaurants. In early August, Yap posted an unfavourable review of Simit & Chai. After the restaurant owners reached out over emails, Yap replied with an Instagram message that the owners felt was both inaccurate and racist.

@twopickyfoodies, which had over 35,000 followers as of August, has since been deleted.

“I think they deleted their Instagram account because they did not want people to realize how many other racially discriminating reviews and comments could have potentially been shared on the profile”, John Ulgen, co-owner of Simit & Chai, said in an interview with the Dialog.

“After posting about them on Instagram, several other restaurants messaged me saying that they had experienced similar issues, many of which shared the same condescending and prejudicial tones.”

In his original post, Yap accused the restaurant of not following proper COVID-19 procedures and failing to provide wheelchair accessible washrooms. He also claimed to have waited over 30 minutes for his orders.

“We have been operating for five years and I do not think we have ever had a 30-minute wait for an order” said Ulgen. “After questioning ourselves, we checked the security cameras and found out that they had only waited 16 minutes while we cooked a fresh batch of our product for their orders.”

Ulgen also said that the security cameras also showed hand sanitizer, free masks, and an acrylic divider blocking the cash area.

Simit & Chai re-opened on April 1 after the first phase of quarantine and have had these measures in place ever since, according to Ulgen. As a strictly takeout restaurant, the café is also not required to offer any washroom services to their customers.

View this post on Instagram

We will never stop saying this, FUCK RACISM! Two supposed professors just tried to “culturally educate” us with their racist remarks. We are still shaking with anger, but will follow up with details. We’d been upset with what our dear friend @justineabigail had to go through recently and to have something like this happen to us, just shows us that our country still has a serious problem with racism.

A post shared by Simit And Chai Company (@simitandchaicompany) on Aug 6, 2020 at 12:35pm PDT

Ulgen said the restaurant received a generous amount of social media support pertaining to the situation, much of which came from students and faculty of the college itself.

“A lot of students from George Brown had messaged us and mentioned that they have felt similar experiences whilst studying at the school,” Ulgen said. “There were also staff and teachers that wanted to remain anonymous if we ever mentioned them that have said they witness this kind of behaviour daily.”

The TwoPickyFoodies Instagram account was quickly deleted as the situation began to receive media attention. On TwoPickyFoodies’ website, a written apology can be found dedicated towards the restaurant. The apology also indicated that Perry was not involved with the account and that all comments and posts were made by Yap.

In a statement to the Dialog, Yap says he deeply regrets the exchange that took place between him and the owners of Simit & Chai.

“I apologized to them personally and posted a letter of apology online. The owners accepted my apology and agreed that they considered the matter resolved,” said Yap.

When asked if this apology felt genuine, Ulgen said that it was drafted and sent for approval before he and his partner and co-owner allowed it to be posted anywhere. Dr. Ian Austin, Dean of the Centre of Business at George Brown, directly contacted Simit & Chai with the apology, and Ulgen requested several changes be made to it before it was posted anywhere, as he “did not feel that it reflected the truth”.

“I think they apologized because they felt like they had to do it,” said Ulgen.

“I have kids and I do not want people with these ideologies teaching anything to my children,” he said. “I do not think they are fit to be teachers at a school as culturally diverse as George Brown and I do believe that their ideologies may threaten their ability to treat all students fairly.”

On August 8, George Brown posted a three-piece statement on Twitter acknowledging the situation.

After following up with Dr. Austin about what sort of measures were being taken by the institution to reprimand the professors’ behaviour, Ulgen was told that the college has an obligation to withhold this information from the public. As of today, Ulgen is still unaware of what action has been taken towards Yap and Perry.