Tasting Menus and Expletives: When Fine Dining Meets Hip-Hop

The Washington Post

11:40 JST, April 2, 2025

When C.L. Stallworth and Thandi Myeni walked into Jônt, a two-Michelin-star restaurant in Washington that costs $375 a person, they were giddy with anticipation.

They had wanted to eat there for months, ever since having such a wonderful experience at Bresca, chef-owner Ryan Ratino’s less-expensive sister restaurant downstairs. They couldn’t wait to taste what Ratino and team had in store: a wood-fired take on Japanese cuisine using European techniques, served at a tasting counter.

Less than five minutes into the May 2022 meal, the couple, who are Black, heard a rap song using the n-word and “bitch” blasting through the restaurant’s sound system. Stallworth, then a Connecticut state representative, thought it was an accident – until a second song used similar language.

Almost three years later, Stallworth is still upset about the experience. “I just felt like, ‘This is not happening, not in this restaurant,’” said Stallworth, 60, senior pastor at East End Baptist Tabernacle Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut. “It was expensive. It’s like, I just paid for a bunch of racism. Maybe that was not his intent, but to me, it was very insulting and degrading.”

They’re not the only diners who have objected to Jônt’s music over the years. The restaurant’s Yelp and OpenTable reviews include frequent references to the hip-hop soundtrack, from some customers who appreciate it and others who don’t. In one Yelp review, a diner complained about “the blaring and cringe-worthy music that filled the restaurant – a cacophony of bad rap with offensive lyrics.” On OpenTable, one wrote that “sitting through a 3 hour meal with hip hop blaring in the background was audibly painful.”

Restaurants at virtually every price point all over the United States, owned by people of many races and ethnicities, are playing hip-hop music with explicit lyrics in their dining rooms. Some restaurateurs say the genre’s widespread popularity makes it fair game for playlists, no matter the lyrics, while some prefer clean versions of the songs. Some diners, particularly younger ones, say they appreciate the energetic vibe the music creates, but others find it yet another example of how restaurants are simply too loud. In some cases, the race or age of a restaurant’s owner – or of its customers – affects the calculation about what to play and how to respond if diners complain.

After they heard the second explicit song at Jônt, Stallworth and Myeni complained to a server about the lyrics. They asked whether this was the music for the night and whether it could be turned down. The server walked away, then returned and told the couple that the music was from the chef’s playlist. Ratino, who is White, was working there that night but never talked to the couple about the music, Myeni said.

Why didn’t they leave? Stallworth said they assumed the music that offended them wouldn’t last for the entire three-hour meal, but it did.

Ratino declined to speak to The Washington Post for this story. More than a year after Stallworth and Myeni’s complaints, Jônt began playing pop, R&B and clean versions of rap songs. Recently, though, Ratino has resumed playing hip-hop with explicit lyrics at Ômo by Jônt, which he opened in Florida in March 2024 and which recently landed in the Michelin Guide.

‘They’re just mimicking what everyone does’

As a Black cultural art form, hip-hop developed out of abject poverty and pain almost 52 years ago in the South Bronx, part of New York City’s poorest borough. Once underground and stigmatized as dangerous and rebellious, hip-hop has exploded into a multibillion-dollar global industry. In 2017, hip-hop/R&B became the dominant music genre in the United States, surpassing rock for the first time, according to Nielsen’s U.S. music year-end report.

Carlton Harrison, professor of business, hip-hop and sports at the University of Central Florida, isn’t surprised to see so many restaurants embracing the music: If they don’t, they run the risk of seeming culturally irrelevant.

While the hip-hop industry is mostly Black, he said, more than 70 percent of its consumers are White. The genre’s move to the mainstream is a positive thing, Harrison said, but, as a consequence, the genre has helped the world get too comfortable with the n-word.

“I’m not pointing the fingers at the restaurant owners,” he said. “They’re just mimicking what everyone does.”

Whether it’s hip-hop or another genre, music is just as crucial to creating restaurant ambiance as lighting and paint color, said Alec DeRuggiero, head music supervisor of Gray V, a New York-based company that crafts playlists for restaurants and other businesses.

Gray V’s consultants advise clients not to play music that contains explicit or potentially offensive content. Playlists that include such lyrics usually stem from people who are “typically compiling music that they personally enjoy, have a nostalgic connection to or that’s currently trending, without considering the full context of a public dining space,” he said.

‘I want it to feel very cool’

Indeed, restaurateurs who play explicit hip-hop cite their personal connection to it.

Michael Beltran, owner of the Michelin-starred Ariete in Miami’s affluent Coconut Grove neighborhood, grew up listening to 1980s and ’90s hip-hop from Nas, Jay-Z, DMX, Rakim and A Tribe Called Quest. He began to appreciate the music even more after learning about the blues, funk and soul that birthed it.

On a recent visit to Ariete, song lyrics got lost in the timbre of the open kitchen and the chatter of guests. But using the Shazam app to identify the music, a Post reporter found that several songs using the n-word were played. One, “Buck Em Down” by Black Moon, uses the word 20 times and glorifies drug use and gun violence.

“I always tell people, like, when they’re dining at Ariete, it’s like hanging out with me in my living room, you know, and I want it to feel very homey, and I want it to feel very cool,” said Beltran, 39, who is White Cuban American. “It’s always dimly lit, it’s pretty dark, actually, the music is loud, and the music is pretty aggressive, because it’s the music I grew up with.”

Similarly, Justin Pichetrungsi, 38, wants his Los Angeles restaurant, Anajak Thai, to reflect his identity and the environment that shaped him as an L.A. native.

The restaurant was one of the first to serve Thai food in the San Fernando Valley when his Thai immigrant parents opened it in 1981, he says. And they played classical and smooth jazz music for a predominantly White clientele, which their son sees as an example of their attempts to assimilate. “Accommodation and compromise become the theme of adaptation and survival,” he says.

Once he took over in 2019, the chef-owner stopped delineating spice levels and revamped the menu. He also pumped up the volume and energy of the music with the help of his girlfriend, Kelsey Lee, 32, who is of Japanese, Chinese and Native Hawaiian descent and curates the playlists. They added country, Taiwanese pop, Mexican ballads and unedited rap music from West Coast rappers such as Snoop Dogg, Warren G, DJ Quik and Dr. Dre. His efforts have drawn a diverse clientele of families, young professionals, athletes, and such celebrities as John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, R&B singer Raphael Saadiq, and rapper Action Bronson. In 2023, the James Beard Foundation named Pichetrungsi California’s best chef.

Stallworth and Myeni said they cannot recall the names of the artists or songs they heard during their Jônt dinner, which cost between $900 and $1,000. But “Jont1,” the restaurant’s 326-song playlist on Spotify, was composed mostly of hardcore rap songs that use explicit language. It is no longer visible on Spotify.

‘I’m not scared to be who I am’

At 34, Ratino is one of the youngest chefs in the U.S. to head a two-Michelin-star restaurant. In 2023, the Michelin Guide Washington, D.C., gave him its Young Chef Award.

In her Yelp review, Myeni questioned whether Jônt would have earned any Michelin stars if it had played music with antisemitic or antigay slurs. It seems to her that society has a higher tolerance for racial epithets about Black people.

“It’s one thing when I’m in the club, but it’s a completely different matter when I’m paying hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars,” Myeni told The Post. “I’m not trying to eat foie gras and hear ‘bitch.’”

Some of the complaints at restaurants that play explicit music seem to reflect a generation gap. The Michelin star that Ariete earned in 2022, for instance, drew older customers who didn’t appreciate hip-hop, Beltran said.

They’ve never complained about the lyrics, he said, but when they ask for the music to be turned down, staff members know to say that the music is programmed into a system they can’t change and that, at a certain time, it’ll turn off. If the guest presses the issue, Beltran tells them they aren’t the only person in the room.

Beltran, who builds the playlists himself, takes it in stride when customers threaten to report him to the Michelin Guide over the music. “I was like, ‘Cool, obviously they know because they’ve been here,’” he said, referring to Michelin inspectors. “So, if this is like a threat or an empty threat or whatever it is, I’m not scared to be who I am.”

The anonymous chief inspector for the Michelin Guide North America told The Post that the guide evaluates restaurants solely on the cuisine. In an email, the inspector said that the text of each review also aims to provide diners “with a sense of the ambiance.” But in its write-ups of four restaurants in this story, the Michelin guide doesn’t include any specifics about the music beyond mentions of Jônt’s “high-energy playlist” and Anajak Thai’s “singularly buzzy atmosphere.”

At Anajak Thai, chef-owner Pichetrungsi remembers an older White couple complaining that a fancy French restaurant would never play such loud, explicit hip-hop music. He remembers thinking to himself that, obviously, the customers should go eat at a fancy French restaurant.

Many other older customers, most of them White, have also taken exception to the loud rap, telling Pichetrungsi to “turn your Black music down” and to play Thai music. “They really did not shy away from telling me their true feelings, and I took these as, well, I don’t want to serve racists,” Pichetrungsi said.

‘The intention behind it is different’

Some restaurateurs adjust their music based on the age and race of their clientele. Monique Rose Sneed, owner of the Bodega on Main in College Park, Georgia, says she would never have played hip-hop with the n-word to a room of White diners because, in her view, it’s not what they should be listening to.

But Sneed, who is Black, served mostly young Black customers (including influencer Keith Lee) before closing her fast-casual sandwich shop last summer and moving it to a takeout-only ghost kitchen. She played New York hip-hop because her restaurant and decor were mirrored after the genre’s birthplace; most of her staff is Black and from Brooklyn or the Bronx. And some of the songs played in the restaurant used explicit lyrics.

During the daytime hours, she blocked songs on Pandora that she considered inappropriate for children and older adults, such as “WAP” by Cardi B and others with sexually explicit lyrics, reserving such songs for Saturday evenings, when more adults were in the room.

“If it’s a Sunday brunch and people are coming in after church,” she said, “it’s not appropriate.”

Sneed, 45, said she didn’t receive any complaints about the music. Still, the way she sees it, just because she played some songs with the n-word doesn’t give White people license to do the same.

“The intention behind it is different. The meaning behind it is different, in my opinion,” she said. “We could argue that amongst each other, ‘Should we be using the word?’ We can continue to have that debate and that conversation, because there is power in words, but I still never will believe that just because I say it gives a White person the right to say it, too.”

What if the clientele is particularly diverse? Beltran said Miami’s Ariete attracts mostly Hispanic people but also Black diners, White diners and people of Asian descent, mostly between the ages of 30 and 70. Beltran said he “never really thought about” what he would do if a Black customer complained about hearing the n-word, but would probably change the music.

“I think that I would assume that hip-hop is also obviously not their thing if they are offended by a song saying that because, in hip-hop, it’s pretty common,” he said.

In Columbia, Missouri, it was a Black customer’s complaint that eventually led to a social media firestorm around a tiny fast-casual restaurant in 2020.

Mahlik Good, now 25, found the music at Beet Box – including the unedited version of “A Lot,” a 2018 song by 21 Savage – especially egregious for two reasons: First, Americans were still reeling from George Floyd’s murder at the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. Second, Good was the only Black customer there.

“I don’t remember exactly how many times I heard the n-word, but it felt out of place, especially given the clientele in that place,” Good told The Post.

Good said that, in a phone conversation with co-owner Benjamin Hamrah, who is Persian American, Hamrah refused to stop playing songs with the n-word at the restaurant. Hamrah did not respond to repeated requests from The Post for an interview or to a list of questions via email.

Then, Hamrah, 41, posted a parental advisory statement on Beet Box’s Instagram in which he told customers to “enter at your own aural risk.” The backlash was fierce. Some commenters found the message insensitive, while others pointed out Beet Box’s social media silence following Floyd’s murder, about a month before Good’s visit.

Four days later, Hamrah posted a lengthy apology on Instagram incorporating some of Good’s feedback. Hamrah promised to hold a virtual town hall with the local Black community and to join a seven-week course on fighting inequity.

And at some point, he changed the music. When a Post reporter visited Beet Box in August, it was playing mostly upbeat pop music at a lower volume about dreams, dancing, breakups and the like, with no explicit lyrics.

‘We are a youthful team’

Days after his dinner at Jônt, Stallworth mailed and emailed Ratino on his Connecticut state legislature letterhead. He praised the cuisine and staff but said the music triggered him by taking him back to 1970s Alabama and the first time he was called the n-word, by a White man when he was 10 years old.

Ratino never responded, Stallworth said, calling it “like insult to injury.”

Myeni, Stallworth’s then-girlfriend, also emailed Jônt with her concerns, and, in a reply that Myeni shared with The Post, a staff member said that she was sorry to hear about Myeni’s experience and that staff didn’t realize how the playlist affected her dinner.

The staff member, whose name was cut off in the screenshots Myeni shared, added that the team cultivated the playlist out of appreciation for the music and the artists and said that, although they are often complimented for it, they are also criticized. Myeni’s thoughtful message “has provided some necessary and fresh perspective,” the staff member said, and would be taken very seriously.

“Your reaction is understanding, considering how provocative the language may be, especially when you hear such a loaded word as that one in particular,” the message said, referring to Myeni’s complaint about hearing the n-word. “We are a youthful team and often toe the line of experimentation and risqué content. Perhaps we may have naively gone too far.”

Years later, the restaurant group has apparently opted again to play similar music. At Ômo by Jônt in Winter Park, about three miles from downtown Orlando, a bite of wagyu came with a side of “Ric Flair Drip” by Offset and Metro Boomin, a song that uses the n-word 11 times, the word “bitch” four times and orders a woman to “show the t–s.”

‘You have to … let them run with it’

In her 2022 review of Jônt, Washingtonian food critic Ann Limpert, who is White, took issue with the loud ’90s hip-hop.

“For a place that feels so trend-conscious and forward-thinking, hearing ‘I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one’ while I nibbled on a superlative Japanese-style custard felt like a dated movie-a relic of the bro-kitchen trend of the early, pre-#MeToo aughts,” Limpert wrote.

Longtime Post food critic Tom Sietsema, who is also White, wrote in 2021 that Jônt’s “louder-than-necessary” soundtrack had music with lyrics that “can be offensive.”

Still, plenty of customers have expressed appreciation for the restaurant’s soundtrack.

Tim Larkins, 44, of Vienna, Virginia, dined there in 2021 with his wife, Danielle, for their 14th wedding anniversary, and he remembers hearing familiar 1990s hip-hop songs from the Notorious B.I.G., Nas and Wu-Tang Clan that used the n-word and explicit lyrics. He said he understands why the lyrics would have upset others, but, for him, the music created a fun, welcoming atmosphere that kept the energy going.

“When you’re in a place like this and you trust the chef to create the best experience possible for you given their skill set, you have to put yourself in their hands and let them run with it,” said Larkins, who is White.

When he ate there in spring 2023, James Durham, 43, of Chicago said he vibed with a couple of Jônt chefs who were essentially dancing to the music while they worked. The tunes made him feel welcome as the only Black man dining there that night. “Middle Child” by J. Cole and “Omertà” by Drake contain the n-word and explicit lyrics, but Durham was so focused on the novelty of hearing hip-hop at a two-Michelin-star restaurant that he didn’t notice.

“You’re eating this amazing food, you’re hearing this great music,” Durham said. “It was orgasmic, because it was just two things at once.”

While he understands – up to a point – why the lyrics might bother other customers, he doesn’t have a problem with them.

“You’re at a restaurant’s peril as far as their soundtrack goes,” Durham said. “You can’t control what music they play, and, in the same vein, would someone be offended if they were playing Mozart … and say, ‘Oh my God, they played this extremely boring music with this extremely expensive meal?’”