Allison Roman, the celebrity cooking columnist, had been the center of a heated controversy almost half a year ago. It was an interview where she criticized Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen for launching lines of home goods-though.
She stamped it unethical that Marie Kondo used her fame to sell out stuff. She also criticizes Teigen, saying that after a successful cookbook, she suddenly has an Instagram page with millions of followers, who seemed like running the content farm for her. She is making tons of money out of it.
The most disturbing thing about Roman’s comments against Kondo and Teigen was that she used broken English to make fun of Kondo. Many people interpreted her jokingly speaking English while talking about Kondo as racist, as both Teigen and Kondo are of Asian origin.
The scuffle was a bigger backlash for the food columnist Roman because she called out two Asian women and also because. She was accused of hypocrisy for having brand deals of her own.
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Who is Allison Roman?
Born on September 1, 1985, and raised in Los Angeles, California, in the San Fransisco area, Allison .E.Roman is an American food writer, chef, and internet personality. She is a food columnist best known for her recipes like#The stew and #The cookies, which went viral on social media.
She was designated to senior positions at Bon Appetit and Buzzfeed Food and wrote a New York Times Cooking column. She was all set to produce a new cooking show for CNN+ in 2022, which was moved to CNN as a cooking show after the shutdown of CNN+.
She has also written several books, among which ‘Nothing Fancy’ was a New York Times Bestseller. She dropped out from the University of California, Santa Cruz, to set up her career in the food industry. She was a chef in many food outlets like Sona in Los Angeles, Quince in San Fransisco, MilkBan in New York City, and Piece’ n’ Thighs in Brooklyn.
Her career began as a freelancer recipe taster at Bon Appetit in 2011, under editor-in-chief Adam Rapport’s leadership. She gradually earned the p[osition of a senior food editor before she joined BuzzFeed Food for a senior post.’ Dining In’ was his first cookbook, published by Penguin House in 2017.
Months later, in 2018, a cookie recipe went viral on Instagram before she joined the New York Times as a regular columnist. Her recipes gained much limelight during a pandemic when domestic cooking increased. Her shallot pasta recipe was much accepted between food shortages and pandemic effects as the recipe needs everyday food ingredients. Later it was throned as the most popular recipe of 2020.
Roman and his column got suspended temporarily when she was criticized for commenting against Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo with racial undertones. In an interview, Roman didn’t take the Time to apologize for her remarks. In December 2020, Roman decided to retire from ‘The New York Times in search of new prospects.
Along with sharing her recipes through social media and a substack Newsletter, she started a new Youtube series in 2021 named Home Movies.
Who is Chrissy Teigen?
Christine Diane Teigen is an American model and television personality. She wrote cookbooks like ‘Cravings: Recipies of All of the food you want to Eat,’ a New York Times bestseller and the second best-selling cookbook of the year.
A year later, she wrote the sequel of her first cookbook ‘Cravings: Hungry for More.’ Along with it, she also released a line of cookware through Target. In 2019, she placed him on the Time list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Who is Marie Kondo?
Marie Kondo, also known as Konmari, is a Japanese organizing consultant, author, and TV host. She is the author of four books on organizing, which sold millions of copies worldwide. Her books were translated into different languages. Her book ‘The Life-changing Magic of tidying up’ got published in more than 30 countries. It became a bestseller in Japan. Europe and was also published in the United States in 2014.
The profile of Kondo and her methods were promoted hugely by the success of her Netflix series Tidying Up with Marrie Kondo,’ which earned her nomination for the Premiere Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality Competition Programme. A follow-up show ‘Sparking Life with Mrrie Kondo’ was released by Netflix in August 2021. She got her name listed as one of Time’s 100 most influential people in 2015. In 2019, Kondo opened her online store- ‘Konmari.’
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The Controversy
In May 2020, in an interview with The New Consumer, the celebrity cookbook author Roman criticized Marrie Kondo-host of Netflix’s reality television series-‘Tydying Up with Marrie Kondo’ for her personalized online home goods, saying that Kondo had sold out immediately and that her online brand was unethical to Kondo’s ‘Konmari’ method.
In the same interview, she also attacked Teigan, moving quickly from a successful cookbook to the line at Target and then to an Instagram page with over a million followers, which looks like people are running a content farm. The scandal got viral on Twitter before Roman could apologize.
People interpreted Roman’s comments about racism as she targeted two Asian women of color and accused her of Asian food appropriation, specifically her viral whitewashed version of chickpea and coconut milk stew.
But it didn’t take long for Roman to sincerely apologize to Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen and make a dynamic comeback after more than one and a half years after the controversy. She was offered a large platform in 2022 with a new CNN+ cooking show.
Roman reported that she was thrilled to work with CNN+ on the project. Nothing could be a better place than giving life to a new kind of cooking and food shows that she had been dreaming of.
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