How an influencer’s beef raised the stakes over a mixed-up steak order

There was plenty at stake at a recent food fight at an old drinking hole in Kolkata. Beef steak was perhaps the least of it.

Recently, an influencer went to Olypub in Kolkata and ordered a mutton steak. The waiter by mistake brought him a beef steak, a dish the restaurant is well-known for. The influencer was upset. That was justified. He proceeded to berate the waiter. The line that stuck out was “What do you mean you made a mistake? Do you know I am a Brahmin?” The waiter happened to be Muslim.

Why do we know all this? Because the influencer filmed the entire interaction with the waiter and posted it on social media. Unsatisfied with the waiter’s response, he then went to the police station. The waiter was taken into custody. The restaurant was shut for a couple of days.
Mixed-up orders are not uncommon. What’s more uncommon is instantly documenting it for social media. A reel comes with intent. It needs drama; it aims to ratchet up the temperature; it seeks to go viral. Revenge might be a dish best served cold but outrage needs to be served hot. For this beefsteak to be well done, it had to become a sizzler.

Eventually, the influencer burnt his own fingers in the fire he himself lit. He faced enormous backlash for trying to turn what appeared to be a mistake into a Hindu-Muslim incident. People questioned why someone who flaunted his Brahminism had even gone to a restaurant that’s famous for its beefsteaks, a restaurant that’s been around since 1947. Ironically, conservative Hindus also tore into him for being a Brahmin and eating mutton. After the backlash, he deleted his post and said he was withdrawing the complaint, though once an FIR is filed it must take its course. He posted an apology from Olypub for the mix-up, denied he was trying to inflame communal tensions and conceded he might have overreacted.

But the after-taste remains. It was about class power at its ugliest. The influencer was basically showing a hapless waiter that he could get him arrested. Recently, a poor street vendor (who also happened to be Muslim) was assaulted and made to do sit-ups in Kolkata. His crime was he happened to be selling chicken patties near an event where a Gita recital was happening. A local politician claimed people’s religious sentiments had been hurt. “Can you sell alcohol in front of a mosque on Friday?” He wondered. Similarly, the influencer’s supporters asked what if the story had been reversed and a Muslim man had been served pork by mistake.

The question no one is asking is did the street vendor who had been selling both vegetarian and chicken patties for 20 years intend to disrupt a Gita recital? Did the waiter know the influencer was Brahmin and deliberately feed him beef? Intent should matter unless one’s real intention is to cook up mischief anyway. Years ago, an observant Hindu friend ate a McDonald’s burger in the US, I remember saying hesitantly, “You know that was beef?” She looked shocked and then said, “Oh I thought hamburger meant ham. It’s OK. I did it by mistake not intention.”

What is sadder is influencers who purportedly want to show the best side of their city wilfully trying to destroy some of its best cultural traits. In an op-ed, columnist and food writer Rajyasree Sen remembers a time when her Marwari friends would accompany her to Nizam’s restaurant in Kolkata and enjoy aloo rolls while she had beef rolls.

“Live and let live,” she says, or rather eat and let eat. Now we live in a time where a friend traveling by train was asked by her co-passengers if she could eat her dinner somewhere else if it contained meat. Luckily, the ticket inspector stood up for her. Next time another ticket inspector might not.

In my neighbourhood in Kolkata, the local butcher shops, Hindu and Muslim-owned, shut on Thursdays for religious reasons. Now, Gurugram has decreed that no meat be sold there on Tuesdays for religious reasons. The difference is one is by diktat, the other was by choice.
Now all sides want to use their food to make a point like the IIT-Bombay students who ate meat at one of the tables “designated for vegetarian food only” in a sort of eat-in protest. Everyone’s food sticks in someone else’s craw.
In a sense, Olypub was lucky. Though a bit shabby, it is a favourite hangout for generations of media professionals and artsy types who all rushed to its defence. It was their sacred cow of sorts.

Some other restaurant in some other neighbourhood might not have been so fortunate. The influencer just chose to have a beef with the wrong place.

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