Pinoy manager belies celebrity chef’s racist tag

MANILA, Philippines - Celebrity chef Paula Deen is no racist.

That is according to a Filipino manager of Deen’s Lady and Sons restaurant in Savannah, Georgia, who started out clearing tables in 1995.

“They treated me very well over there,” Erick Pineda was quoted as telling the American news and opinion website The Daily Beast.

“The woman I know, the family I know, she would never speak that way (with racist epithets). I’m an Asian guy working in a southern restaurant, even in a joke it was never brought up. I know what racism feels like. I never experienced that at her restaurant,” he said.

In all his years at the restaurant, Pineda said he never saw blacks treated differently from whites nor were they forced to use different bathrooms, or different entrances. “We all used the same door, we all came in the same way, we all used the same bathroom,” he said.

A lawsuit was filed against Deen by Lisa Jackson, a former manager of Uncle Bubba’s Seafood and Oyster House, which the celebrity chef co-owns with her brother, saying she was sexually harassed and worked in a hostile environment rife with racial slurs.

The report also quoted a former server at Deen’s restaurant as saying that the kitchen staff was exclusively black, but “front of house” staff was about half black, half white.

The former employee added that while some staff were fired for “the littlest things” she didn’t hear about racism at Lady and Sons.

“When you’re in Georgia, there are some things you don’t do and say and not just for political correctness,” she told The Daily Beast. “Say the wrong thing and someone will probably turn around and kick your ass.”

Amid the allegations, the Food Network has said it will not renew the contract of Deen’s cooking show when it expires this month. Deen became famous for her “Paula’s Home Cooking,” which started in 2002.

Deen admitted her indiscretions, including the use of the “N” word, but said it has been a long time, and had since apologized.

“I want to apologize to everybody for the wrong I’ve done,” Deen said in a video statement. “I want to learn and grow from this. Inappropriate, hurtful language is totally, totally unacceptable.”