Last week Arielle Haspel, the non-Asian owner of a new Chinese cafe called Lucky Lee’s, posted a promo online that enraged (some) people.

She declared that her University Place eatery would serve “clean” Chinese-American dishes with healthier ingredients than those in traditional lo mein, which makes some people feel “bloated and icky the next day.”

Now, for some of us, starchy lo mein and its ilk bring on the bloat in just 15 minutes, let alone the next day. Yet for her temerity in stating an obvious fact, poor Haspel immediately ran afoul of the Twitter mob, who accused her of racism and “cultural appropriation.”

Increasingly politicized Eater.com piled on, attacking her “racist positioning,” and then lectured her, in a second article, on how she could have gotten an American-Chinese restaurant right. “It would be simple enough to describe how your menu has gluten-free and vegan options without applying so many problematic qualifiers,” the writer scolded. (Haspell later apologized in the New YorkTimes, “We are so sorry.”)

Welcome to the noxious new world of culinary correctness that goes well beyond the ideals of sustainable, health-aware food that doesn’t “exploit oppressed growers.” Microaggressions lurk on every menu, folks!

Today’s rage is mostly directed at non-Asians who cook or sell Asian food — but it knows no culinary boundaries.

Did you know there’s a raging debate (in some quarters) over supposedly crucial distinctions between soul food and Southern food, even when dishes claiming to be one or the other are exactly the same? A USA Today article in February cited the views of “experts” who say that “soul” refers to a slave cuisine that’s lamentably been “gentrified.” Barbecue, according to The New Yorker, is America’s “most political food,” in part because pigs were roasted by slaves pre-Civil War for the enjoyment of whites at patriotic celebrations.

Eddie Huang, a minor downtown chef with a major media presence (TV, books and previously a clothing line), half-incoherently tweeted that “nothing about” Lucky Lee’s is Chinese except that it’s “an attempt at the ancient Chinese art of bootlegging.”

In 2012, the same Eddie Huang condemned Marcus Samuelsson, a vastly more successful talent, for his book about opening Red Rooster in Harlem, accusing him of “cultural appropriation” before anybody used the term. To Huang, the Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised Samuelsson was contravening culinary rectitude because he wasn’t from Harlem and thus had no right to claim a connection to the neighborhood or to make money there by opening a restaurant.

Now, maybe “clean” wasn’t the best word for Haspel to use. Today’s Chinese restaurants are vastly better than in the past. But was she guilty of “playing into racist tropes,” as BuzzFeed claimed? Lots of American-Chinese food is historically oily and fatty — just as Italian-American tomato sauce is oily and acidic, just as Jewish-American cuisine is fatty and salty. But in certain “woke” circles today, a “European” (i.e., white person) who dares to launch a restaurant that serves just about any non-white-European food risks opprobrium and shaming as a racist, neocolonial, recipe-stealing profiteer.

Lucky Lee’s menu might not be “authentic” either. But is this a capital crime?

Once in a while, the complaints have merit. Last week, Burger King apologized for, and yanked, a silly video that showed mostly Asian people clumsily trying to eat its Vietnamese sweet chili tendercrisp burger with chopsticks.

More often than not, it’s insane. Two women in culinarily correct Portland, Ore., for example, were bullied two years ago into closing their burrito truck because they weren’t Mexican and were “stealing Mexican culture.” By this “logic,” the non-Jewish, Portuguese-born owner and Irish-American chef of kosher steakhouse Le Marais on West 46th Street shouldn’t be allowed to earn a living. Nor should any non-Italian chef of an Italian restaurant (see: Marea’s Michael White) or any non-French chef of a French restaurant (see: Vaucluse’s Michael White).

Gordon Ramsay’s claim to launch an “authentic” Chinese restaurant in London called Lucky Cat drew vicious tweets, widely picked up by the groveling media, such as “No!!! Another celeb making profits off Asian culture & food without Asians at the table! How authentic can that be?!”

Lucky Lee’s menu might not be “authentic” either. But is this a capital crime?

Earlier this month, New York Times critic Pete Wells drew the ire of Eater.com for using “strange” language in his review of a Korean place, Haenyeo. Wells “curiously frames his two-star review,” Eater tut-tutted. Yet Wells simply wrote that “intimidating” restaurants don’t usually “prosper” in Park Slope, where tastes tend toward burritos and lobster rolls, yet the customers at Haenyeo didn’t look intimidated while noshing on presumably more exotic kimchi.

According to the site, Wells had previously “come under fire” (had he really?) for writing that another Korean spot, Hwaban, was a “modern Korean restaurant where you’d take your mother.” It was a harmless play on the Korean-born owner’s own cheerful statements that she’d learned the dishes from her mother. But to the woke set, truth and common sense are too icky to digest.

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