Restaurant Poster Touches Off Protests Artwork At Seattle’s Obachine Attacked As Offensive, Racist

At the entrance to ObaChine, the upscale pan-Asian restaurant opened downtown last year by Wolfgang Puck and his wife, hangs a poster that has put the establishment at the center of a tussle over the power of images.

The poster - developed from a turn-of-the-century advertisement for a colonial French tea company - features a colorful drawing of a Chinese man with a long braid and slanted eyes drinking a cup of tea.

It is a personal favorite of Barbara Lazaroff, Puck’s wife, who says a copy has been displayed without complaint for 15 years at Chinois, the Los Angeles restaurant that - along with Spago - helped establish the reputation of the Wolfgang Puck Food Corp., based in Santa Monica, Calif.

But some Asian-Americans in Seattle contend the image promotes a racist stereotype. They point to the exaggerated slant of the eyes, the old-fashioned braid, and the extreme yellow of the man’s skin.

They want the poster removed.

A boycott of the trendy eatery has been threatened by Ron Chew, the poster’s most prominent critic and director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum.

Chew said he heard about the poster months ago, but did not see it until last week.

“My jaw dropped,” he said. “I normally don’t get worked up about that stuff, but that image is very, very racist. For a restaurant that serves Asian food to have their name on that is very revolting.”

Lazaroff, who had planned a visit to Seattle this week on business related to the couple’s two restaurants here, met with Chew on Thursday to discuss the matter.

“I can understand that since I’m not Asian that maybe my sensibilities are different,” she said.

Joe Conti, Seattle-based vice president of the Puck organization, said the poster likely will be removed.

However, Lazaroff said after Thursday’s meeting she does not feel the poster is offensive, but will consider taking it down.

“The simplest issue would be to just take the image down,” she said. “As a person who is passionate about the collection of art, and as a person who feels totally innocent, I don’t feel uncomfortable about the image.”

KIRO-TV reported that Lazaroff was upset about an incident in which several customers threatened to tear the poster from the wall.

She is reportedly considering her options and will make a decision about the poster in about two weeks.

“My intention was never to offend anybody,” Lazaroff said in an interview from the couple’s home in Beverly Hills, Calif., published Thursday in The Seattle Times.

“Obviously there’s a much more sensitized public in Seattle, much more so than in L.A.,” she said.

“I accept that there wasn’t any intent on offending the community, but it’s belittling of Asian people,” Chew said.

He rejects arguments based on the image’s vintage.

“I’m seeing the history through the eyes of what the history meant to the Chinese,” he said. “It was an ugly history, and that picture speaks to the ways that the Chinese were wronged.”

Chew has called Gov. Gary Locke, the nation’s first governor of Chinese extraction, about the poster. He also has brought it to the attention of Asian-American organizations.