A restaurant-goer shows soy sauce being served in a dropper bottle in a viral video—and says that the condiment was “gentrified.”
In a TikTok posted on Monday, Alex Mutammara (@mutammara) shows soy sauce being served in a small dropper bottle at a restaurant he was dining at. Soy sauce is usually served in the bottle it was purchased in, a small dish, or a traditional soy sauce dispenser.
“They gentrified soy sauce y’all,” Mutammara wrote in the video’s overlay text. In the video’s caption, he wrote that he didn’t understand why the sauce was being served in a dropper bottle.
On Wednesday, Mutammara’s video had over a million views on TikTok.
@mutammara Like PLEASE just help me understand #soysauce #nyc #foodie ♬ Spongebob Closing Theme Song Music – Ocean Floor Orchestra
In a follow up video, Mutammara says that the soy sauce dropper was served at Rule of Thirds, a Japanese restaurant in Brooklyn, NY.
Mutammara told the Daily Dot that he and his friends “got a kick out of” the soy sauce dropper.
“It’s definitely something none of us had ever seen before,” he said in an email.
Commenters on his initial video added to Mutammara’s joke that the soy sauce had been gentrified.
“Soy sauce?” a commenter wrote. “Ohh u mean the fermented organic soybean extract.”
“They gave u the soy in The Ordinary salicylic acid 2%,” another wrote. The Ordinary, a skincare company, packages many of its products in similar dropper bottles.
Others admitted they actually thought dispensing soy sauce via a dropper was beneficial.
“I like this,” a commenter wrote. “It’s easier to control how much soy sauce comes out.”
“We can all admit this is honestly a good idea,” a commenter said. “Aince it’s so hard to pour a reasonable amount of soy sauce from the Kikkoman dispensers.” Kikkoman is a popular brand of soy sauce.
“Gentrification pops off sometimes,” another commenter shared. “And this is one of those times.”
All that said, one commenter reminded viewers that the way soy sauce bottles are made in Asia allows for users to control how much soy sauce is dispensed: These bottles have two holes, one on either end of the cap, and diners can cover one of the holes to dispense less soy sauce.
As for Mutammara himself, he told the Daily Dot that he prefers to use a traditional soy sauce bottle.
The Daily Dot has reached out Rule of Thirds via email.
