A conversation with the SF chef taken down by a TikTok influencer

Anyone even vaguely in touch with San Francisco’s food scene is by now familiar with the name Luke Sung. The 52-year-old chef has been at the center of a social media firestorm that started in July with allegations of his rude behavior toward a twentysomething TikToker named Karla Marcotte. This snowballed into the immediate closure of his restaurant — and his public humiliation — while increasing Marcotte’s followers from 15,ooo to 458,000.  

Sung, who moved to San Francisco from Taiwan at 16, started his career in the pre-Yelp days of brigade-style kitchens, working under top San Francisco chefs, including Roland Passot of La Folie and Sylvain Portay at the Ritz-Carlton. He opened acclaimed restaurant Isa in 2000 and was nominated for a James Beard Award. With great enthusiasm, he came out of semi-retirement in May to open the wine bar Kis Cafe — only to find that chefs have to face a new reality when it comes to the perils of social media.  

Through the last few weeks — as his businesses were getting review-bombed, his employees tearfully laid off, and his reputation dragged through the mud online — Sung has struggled to make sense of the fiasco and his role in inciting it. The situation, which has been covered extensively by local and national news outlets, has led to a new round of handwringing about the relationship between influencers and restaurants and the risks of running a business in a world where any moment can go viral. 

Beyond an apology that Sung released to the public and directly to Marcotte herself, he has not spoken about his experience. (Marcotte, meanwhile, has not responded to The Standard’s repeated request for comment.) But over a 90-minute conversation Friday, he spoke at length to The Standard about his actions, his regrets, and his crushing feeling of loss.  

It’s been three weeks since everything went down with Kis Cafe. Why are you willing to speak about this now?

My kids advised me to not speak up because they think people will pick apart what I say and give me more hate. But I can’t imagine it being any worse. And I’m genuinely concerned about the future of quality, of cheffing, of restaurant workers, of human behavior.

Karla Marcotte reached out to ask if Kis Cafe wanted to do a “collab,” as she put it in her DM to the restaurant, and your business partner Eric Lin agreed and invited her in. What happened next, from your perspective?

She came in at 5 p.m. on a Tuesday, when the dining room was empty. My partner didn’t tell me she was coming until she got there, and I didn’t know anything about her. I thought she’d say, “Hey, Mr. Sung, I read about you, and I am so happy to be doing this with you.” But she showed up and sat down and didn’t say hi. My high expectation for professionalism has failed me again and again — it just brings disappointment.

Then what happened?

Eric didn’t introduce me to her or talk to her or let her know about the restaurant. I wanted to see what she did, so I started to look at her TikTok. Right away I saw creamy spaghetti in a pan with sliced, overcooked New York steak on top that she had made. That night, I was running a special with this beautiful coho salmon. I didn’t want to be misrepresented by someone who doesn’t understand the difference between Atlantic salmon and king salmon.

So I went over to her and said, “Hi. Somewhere along the line, I think there may have been a mistake. I’m not sure if we have the same audience.” I think I asked her, “Have you looked up Kis Cafe? Do you know my background? Do you know what we’re trying to do?” I think there was a lot of “do you know,” and she was intimidated — which I can understand.

What was her response?

She said, “I know you're a wine bar, and you don’t have a website,” as if there’s no information on Google. I said, “Well, it’s your work, and you have to do your research.” I know how hard my daughter [Isa, an influencer] works to do her things well. She would never head to a gig unprepared.

Then Karla said she felt disrespected by me looking at her TikTok in front of her. She said to her husband, who had just arrived, “We’re not going to eat here.” And she left. But before she left, she said, “The restaurant world is really small. There will be consequences.”

She said that?

She said this for sure. One hundred percent.

Your daughter Isa, a lifestyle influencer and self-identified AAPI creator, posted that “as a daughter of immigrant parents,” she has spent her whole life “trying to educate” her father on “regulating his emotions and words.” Would you say this moment was out of character for you?

Well, my daughter is my daughter, right? Does your father lecture you? I didn’t feel like I was disrespecting [Marcotte]. I was actually just doing the research that my partner should have done before she came in. When she said that she felt disrespected, I said, “I feel disrespected that you don’t even know who the chef is. [As a collaborator], you’re supposed to be representing me.”

How long after Marcotte left did her post come to your attention?

My daughter called me that night and said, “Dad, what happened?” She was upset with me. I think she understands the internet more than me. I didn’t know what would happen to my family, my staff. My daughter stayed up all night watching everything go down. She got 20,000 hate comments, and my son, who’s a musician, also got a ton of hate comments. They were traumatized. The next morning at 6:30, my daughter called me and said she’d responded to Karla, saying she didn’t condone my behavior. She did the right thing. 

Do you think you could have let the whole thing blow over instead of closing the restaurant and “firing yourself,” as you’ve put it?

No, because of the whole hate army. Our Google rating went to 1.1, with 3,000 negative reviews. I had to protect my children too.

But I know you were doing well — you said yourself you were doing 100 covers a night. I doubt your core diners were ever part of this online attack. The internet has a short attention span.

I think there would have been 80% of people that would have continued to support Kis Cafe, but there might have been another 20% who would have come in to start things with me, say, “Do you know who I am? Do I have enough followers to eat here?” The stuff they’re saying online.

You’ve also stepped back from Domo, your Hayes Valley sushi restaurant. Why?

A guy [on TikTok] named Ed Choi pointed the hate army toward Domo. People have been leaving hate comments all the way from Copenhagen, England, Malaysia.

How might this have gone down differently in 2000, when you started your acclaimed restaurant Isa — four years before Yelp launched, and long before influencers existed? 

A food writer would know the sweat and blood and the training that went behind this plate of food in front of them. They will also be looking around, seeing the heart that went into the interior, the service, the ambience, right?

Why did you become a chef in the first place?

Restaurants have always been the place for people who don’t fit in in certain places — that’s the reason they cook. Maybe because they have a problem communicating, or they are very impatient and have to keep moving, or they feel lost, and they need a small community where they have a group of people that work together and joke together, or maybe they’re in so much pain that they don’t want to be just alone and think about things. They’d rather just go to work, and then just be so tired, and go to sleep. 

I take it you identify with these people.

I’m a classic immigrant, right? You don’t have a choice [of profession] when you come to this country: You are either going to be a mechanic, a hair stylist, a busboy, or work in a kitchen. It really takes pride to be a chef. Which is why I had that tone [with Marcotte], I guess. When you don’t have pride, maybe you won’t take the tone that I did with Karla — but the pride is the part that keeps you going.

What’s your takeaway from this experience?

I mean, why would a young chef go and learn how to cook today, if some inexperienced anybody can come in and close your restaurant? They don't even need to hear what you have to say. 

Now that you’ve closed Kis Cafe and stepped back from Domo, what’s next?

My family is going to therapy together soon. Everything is broken into pieces. I have to try to pick it up and glue it back together. I have to just let it heal.