Social media has gone to war over the closure of a pop-up burrito shop in Portland, Ore., after its two female owners were accused of cultural appropriation.
Kooks Burritos was initially a smash hit after opening up earlier this year, attracting the attention of the Willamette Week, which wrote about owners Kali Wilgus and Liz Connelly and how they got the idea for the homemade tortillas-turned-breakfast-sensation.
But food blog The Portland Mercury jumped all over the success story – and the women quietly closed up shop, the Daily Mail reported.
"This week in white nonsense, two white women . . . decided it would be cute to open a food truck after a fateful excursion to Mexico," wrote Mercury blogger Jagger Blaec.
"There's really nothing special about opening a Mexican restaurant — it's probably something that happens everyday. But the owners of Kooks Burritos all but admitted . . . that they colonized this style of food when they decided to 'pick the brains of every tortilla lady there in the worst broken Spanish ever.'"
Twitter wasted no time weighing in.
Others derided the controversy.
And there were even some who came to the women's defense, the Daily Mail noted.
"If learning how to make a food from another culture and selling it is now considered cultural appropriation, then why not take this issue up with the successful Portland businesses that have been doing this at a much larger scale for years, and stop harassing these two women struggling to start a small business," one person wrote on Facebook, per the outlet.
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