Opinion: Lowbrow Casual Restaurants Is a Lesson on Just How Rampant Ableism Is Today
In the long and storied history of food journalism, there is one legendarily brutal restaurant review that lives forever in notoriety. Written by food critic Pete Wells, it is an especially venomous review of Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, founded, of course, by its iconically frosted-tipped namesake, food TV personality Guy Fieri.
The article is a glorious crescendo of dunks that attacks the establishment’s dishes and ambiance, composed almost entirely of questions, with vitriolic bangers such as “Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste?” and “When we hear the words Donkey Sauce, which part of the donkey are we supposed to think about?” It is a chef’s kiss piece of mockery that, for all its power, depends on the restaurant owner’s ability to take adversity in stride. This is F&B, after all. Bawal pikon.
That Post by Lowbrow Casual Restaurant
On the afternoon of February 5, in the Year of our Lord 2025, the official Instagram account of Lowbrow Casual Restaurants posted a slideshow post with…writing of the opposite quality. Which is to say, bad. Which is to say, pikon. A blue drink that glows like nuclear waste. (The post has been deleted, but of course we have receipts.)
The post opens with the vacuously Gervaisian take of “Restaurants in Manila are mad about fake PWD IDs used as permanent discount cards. We get it. 3 out of every 10 people who eat in our restaurants use one. Are 30 percent of us disabled? (Don’t answer ahaha)” The parenthetical "ahaha" assumes that the audience is in on the joke of a persona who thinks themselves clever, but it is this persona that chimes in facetiously on an otherwise serious issue.
A few days ago, an official statement by the Restaurant Owners of the Philippines made the rounds on social media, rightly lamenting the business struggles of keeping a restaurant afloat, as holders of fake PWD cards cut into the earnings of honest businesses. It goes: “The PWD discount was created to support those who genuinely need it, but widespread abuse of fake PWD cards is now putting a serious strain on restaurants and other businesses.” Here, we see how breathtakingly easy it is to articulate the struggles of the F&B industry without throwing PWDs under the bus. Being for PWDs doesn’t mean being against the F&B industry, and vice versa. Though reactions to the post online were mixed, many were sensitive to the experiences of restaurant owners, while considering the political and material realities that make feeding people so challenging. Discourse-wise, we could have just kept it there.
And yet, in all their infinite business savvy, Lowbrow elaborates on the second slide of their post just how difficult it can be to tell one “invisible” disability from another:
“We hear the argument that many disabilities are legit but invisible. True. But can you tell which mental health patient deserves a discount:
Carlos feels compelled to butcher & eat his coworker
Jenny wants to overdose 2x a day
Ralph gets anxiety attacks around obese pugs”
Written with the language register of a guy who played too much Cards Against Humanity in college and never stopped, the Lowbrow post contemptuously designates the disabled as their greatest enemy while simultaneously insinuating that they're...possibly not real?
Additionally, it beseeches its customer base (ah, restaurant diners–a famously cooperative lot that never protests) to exercise cop-like vigilance in identifying scammers, while lumping them in with PWDs whose disabilities are not readily visible.
It offers solutions such as
“stare at them while squinting
call them Satan
break your leg, become truly disabled, show them how superior your disability is”
It is remarkable just how spiritually destitute and hate-spiked the post is, which reads like a clunky cross-breed between a Bill Burr rant and a child’s tantrum. The truth is, ableism will find any rationale to invalidate the lived experiences of the disabled. Let it boil over and such prejudices will bleed from the “invisible” to the visible. “Living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? Well at least you can walk without assistance.” “Need a cane to get around? Well at least you’re not wheelchair-bound.” “You need a wheelchair to navigate your day-to-day life? Well if you can afford a wheelchair, then surely you can pay full price for our Lemon Ginger Roasted Grouper.” And on and on, a buffet of excuses.
Weakly, the post gestures toward some facsimile of good will by calling the fake PWD card issue “a tax on honest people,” only for its concluding slide to say that it will change nothing, ringing as hollowly as an Always Pan saucier being thrown into a trash compactor.
Like clockwork, Lowbrow deletes the post after letting it reek like surströmming in cyberspace for a few hours, before publishing a notes app screenshot in beleaguered haste, pleading forgiveness for the post’s surliness. Though the non-apology explains itself with about as much grace as Colleen Ballinger with a ukulele, credit where credit is due, it does say, “We were insensitive as it trivialized issues that we should have taken seriously” with the practiced sniveling of a PR script.
Wonderful! Delicious. I just have some questions.
Lowbrow Casual Restaurants, is your Flowerboy Beef Noodle Soup broth made with broken leg bones, harvested from those with a truly superior disability?
Is your Thank You Seafood Anchovy Butter Steak & Mash best seasoned by the tannines of a PTSD survivor’s reopened psychological wounds, or the salted tears of a myalgic encephalomyelitis patient? Are your gochujang-glazed Bad Bird Buffalo Crispers as spicy as the nigh-unbearable inflammation that comes with living with Crohn’s?
Why do your overpriced Pork Potstickers cost about as much as two 50mg Zoloft tablets when they clearly don’t make my friends living with chronic depression remotely as happy?
Did you think your post would get the same laughs as Mommy Oni talking about how to behave in a ~fine dining restaurant~? Did you stop to think that you’re actually Mikay, bringing boorish behavior into an otherwise polite discussion?
When we hear the words “Bad Bird,” what kind of bird are we supposed to think about?
Lowbrow Casual Restaurants, why does your deleted post sound like somebody who hasn’t read any new books since their edgelord Chuck Palahniuk phase?
Why is it that OnlyPans, a restaurant I wrongfully wrote off at first because its name is its name, released a more thoughtful and reasonable statement on the fake card issue than you?
My younger brother who has autism likes your sandwiches at Fowlbread—what should I tell him? Do you wanna talk to him? Will you call him Satan? Can you go for one second without sounding like “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” meets Jo Koy at the Golden Globes?
Lowbrow Casual Restaurants, considering how impaired your deleted post came across, by any chance, does the person who posted it have a Lowbrowtomy? Do they have a card for that? Does the card help offset the mountain of expenses that come with being an idiot?
