Culinary Gentrification: Why the Acarajé Isn’t a Trend

When is a snack no longer a snack? When it stops being nourishment and becomes a marketing gimmick. That’s the concern at the heart of the recent backlash against the so-called acarajé do amor—a sugary, strawberry-filled take on one of Brazil’s most sacred dishes.

For the Associação de Baianas de Acarajé (ABAM), it wasn’t just a matter of taste—it was a matter of memory. The traditional acarajé is more than street food. It is spiritual offering, ancestral resistance, and daily ritual—carried, literally, on the heads of Black women who have spent generations defending its place in the cultural and religious fabric of Brazil. Turning it into a dessert may seem harmless. But when you remove the vatapá, the shrimp, the dendê, and serve it in a Barbie-pink rebranding, you’re not just tweaking a recipe. You’re severing the umbilical cord that ties this dish to its origins.

ABAM’s statement was clear: “We are ancestral entrepreneurs focused on the tradition left by our ancestors, without surfing purposeless contemporary influences.” It’s a refusal to be cuteified, diluted, or rebranded. And it echoes other global fights: soul food on gentrified brunch menus in Brooklyn, indigenous dishes reinterpreted by chefs with no ties to the land, migrant flavors sanitized to suit Airbnb palates.

Supporters of innovation will argue that sweetened versions or “acarajé rosa” (inspired by the 2023 Barbie movie) might introduce new audiences to the dish. That it’s playful, even empowering. But empowering for whom? Because often, these culinary remixers aren’t the Baianas themselves, but third parties capitalizing on the exoticism of tradition while distancing it from its makers. The same economy that bans Candomblé ceremonies from public squares suddenly feels comfortable remixing its sacred food into an Instagrammable curiosity.

This isn’t purism for purism’s sake. It’s about sovereignty. Cultural appropriation doesn’t always arrive with malice. Sometimes it comes wearing a smile, carrying strawberries, and promising fusion. But fusion without respect is still erasure. It replaces context with novelty and memory with monetization.

When a Baiana dresses in white and sets up her stand, she’s doing more than selling food. She’s invoking Iansã, summoning history, anchoring her people in a city that often pretends they don’t belong. You don’t have to believe in the orixás to understand that some dishes aren’t meant to be turned pink.

The truth is: we’ve seen this before. Funk gets institutionalized and loses its edge. Indigenous prints get copied without credit. Now even acarajé risks becoming another sanitized relic served to tourists who prefer sugar to spice, trend to truth.

Let’s be honest: if someone discovers acarajé through a sweet remix, what will they really understand about it? That it’s tasty? Or that it’s a snack like any other? A spoonful of strawberry doesn’t carry the weight of ancestral trauma, resistance, and survival. It just makes the forgetting go down easier.

So no, this isn’t about being anti-innovation. It’s about setting boundaries. It’s about saying that not every tradition should be bent into a marketing hook or Instagram stunt. Sometimes, the most radical thing you can do is keep the original recipe. Whole. Uncompromised. Unapologetically ancestral.